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‘‘Oh, father, don’t, don’t! You’ll hurt him.” 

— Frontispiece. 


FORGE AND FURNACE 


jf* novel 


BY 

FIvORENCE WARDEN 

AUTHOR OF 

“THE HOUSF ON THE MARSH,” “SCHEHERAZADE,” “A PRINCE 
OF DARKNESS,” ETC. 



NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY 
156 FIFTH AVENUE 


A 








V 






Copyright, 1896, 

DY 


NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Pair of Brown Eyes 5 

II. Claire 13 

III. Something Wrong at the Farm 18 

IV. Claire’s Apology 21 

V. Bram’s Rise in Life 31 

VI. Mr. Biron’s Condescension 38 

VII. Bram’s Dismissal 46 

VIII. Another Step Upward 54 

IX. A Call and a Dinner Party 61 

X. The Fine Eyes of her Cashbox 70 

XI. Bram Shows Himself in a New Light 80 

XII. A Model Father 86 

XIII. An Ill-matched Pair 102 

XIV. The Deluge Ill 

XV. Parent and Lover 118 

XVI. The Pangs of Despised Love 126 

XVII. Bram Speaks his Mind 134 

XVin. Face to Face 143 

XIX. Sanctuary 151 

XX. The Furnace Fires 159 

XXI. The Fire Goes Out 168 

XXII. Claire’s Confession 173 

XXIII. Father and Daughter 184 

XXIV. Mr. Biron’s Repentance 190 

XXV. Meg 200 

XXVI. The Goal Reached 206 




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FOKGE AND FURNACE; 


THE ROMANCE OF A SHEFFIELD BLADE. 


CHAPTER 1. 

A PAIR OF BROWN EYES. 

Thud, thud. Amidst a shower of hot, yellow sparks 
the steam hammer came down on the glowing steel, shak- 
ing the ground under the feet of the master of the works 
and his son, who stood just outside the shed. In the full 
blaze of the August sunshine, which was, however, tem- 
pered by such clouds of murky smoke as only Sheffield 
can boast, old Mr. Cornthwaite, acclimatized for many a 
year to heat and to coal dust, stood quite unconcerned. 

Tall, thin, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his 
bones, with a fresh-colored face which seemed to look 
the younger and the handsomer for the silver whiteness 
of his hair and of his long, silky moustache, Josiah Corn- 
thwaite’s was a figure which would have arrested atten- 
tion anywhere, but which was especially noticeable for the 
striking contrast he made to the rough-looking York- 
shiremen at work around him. 

Like a swarm of demons on the shores of Styx, they 
moved about, haggard, gaunt, uncouth figures, silent 
amidst the roar of the furnaces and the whirr of the 
wheels, lifting the bars of red-hot steel with long iron 
rods as easily and unconcernedly as if they had been hot 


6 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


rolls baked in an infernal oven, heedless of the red-hot 
sparks which fell around them in showers as each blow of 
the steam hammer fell. 

Mr. Cornthwaite, whose heart was in his furnaces, his 
huge revolving wheels, his rolling mills, and his gigantic 
presses, watched the work, familiar as it was to him, with 
fascinated eyes. 

“ What day was it last month that Biron turned up 
here?” he asked his son with a slight frown. 

This frown often crossed old Mr. Cornthwaite’s face 
when he and his son were at the works together, 
for Christian by no means shared his father’s enthu- 
siasm for the works, and was at small pains to hide the 
fact. 

“ Oh, I’m sure I don’t remember. How should I re- 
member?” said he carelessly, as he looked down at his 
hands, and wondered how much more black coal dust 
there would be on them by the time the guv’nor would 
choose to let him go. 

A young workman, with a long, thin, pale, intelligent 
face, out of which two deep-set, shrewd, gray eyes looked 
steadily, glanced up quickly at Mr. Cornthwaite. He 
had been standing near enough to hear the remarks 
exchanged between father and son. 

“ Well, Elshaw, what is it?” said the elder Mr. Corn- 
thwaite with an encouraging smile. “ Any more discov- 
eries to-day?” 

A little color came into the young man’s face. 

“ No, sir,” said he shyly in a deep, pleasant voice, speak- 
ing with a broad Yorkshire accent which was not in his 
mouth unpleasant to the ear. “ Ah heard what you asked 
Mr. Christian, sir, and remember it was on the third of 
the month Mr. Biron came.” 

“ Thanks. Your memory is always to be trusted. I 
think you’ve got your head screwed on the right way, 
Elshaw.” 

“ Ah’m sure. Ah hope so, sir,” said the young fellow, 
smiling in return for his employer’s smile, and touching 
his cap as he moved away. 


A PAIR OF BROWN EYES. 


7 


“ Smart lad that Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite ap- 
provingly. « And steady. Never drinks, as so many of 
them do.” 

“ Can you wonder at their drinking ? ” broke out Chris- 
tian with energy, “ when they have to spend their lives 
at this infernal work? It parches my throat only to 
watch them, and I’m sure if I had to pass as many hours 
as thej" do in this awful, grimy hole I should never be 
sober.” 

The elder Mr. Cornthwaite looked undecided whether 
to frown or to laugh at this tirade, which had at least the 
merit of being uttered in all sincerity by the very person 
who could least afford to utter it. He compromised by 
giving breath to a little sigh. 

“ It’s very disheartening to me to hear you say so, 
Chris, when it has been the aim of my life to bring you 
up to carry on and build up the business I have given 
my life to,” he said. 

Christian Cornthwaite’s face was not an expressive one. 
He was extraordinarily unlike his father in almost every 
way, having prominent blue eyes, instead of his father’s 
piercing black ones, a fair complexion, while his father’s 
was dark, a figure shorter, broader, and less upright, and 
an easy, happy-go-lucky walk and manner, as different as 
possible from the erect, military bearing of the head of 
the firm. 

What little expression he could throw into his big blue 
eyes he threw into them now, as he pulled his long, ragged, 
tawny moustache and echoed his father’s sigh. 

“ Well, isn’t it disheartening for me too,” sir,” protested 
he good-humoredly, “to hear you constantly threatening 
to put me on bread and water for the rest of my life if I 
don’t settle down in this beastly hole and try to love it ? ” 

“ It ought to be natural to you to love what has brought 
you up in every comfort, educated you like a prince, and 
made of you ” 

Josiah Cornthwaite paused, and a twinkle came into his 
black eyes. 

“ Made of you,” he went on thoughtfully, “ a selfish. 


8 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


idle vagabond, with only wit enough to waste the money 
his father has made.” 

“Thank you, sir,” said Chris, quite cheerfully. “If 
that’s the best the works have done for me, why should 
I love them ? ” 

At that moment young Elshaw passed before his eyes 
again, and recalled Christian’s attention to a subject 
which would, he shrewdly thought, divert the current of 
his father’s thoughts from his own deficiencies. 

“ I wonder, sir,” he said, “ that you don’t put Brain 
Elshaw into the office. He’s fit for something better than 
this sort of thing.” 

And he waved his hand in the direction of the group in 
the middle of which stood Elshaw, rod in hand, with his 
lean, earnest face intent on his work. 

Josiah Cornthwaite’s eyes rested on the young man. 
Brain was a little above the middle height, thin, sallow, 
with shoulders somewhat inclined to be narrow and slop- 
ing, but with a face which commanded attention. He had 
short, mouse-colored hair, high cheek bones, a short nose, 
a straight mouth, and a very long straight chin ; altogether 
an assemblage of features which promised little in the way 
of attractiveness. 

And yet attractive his face certainly was. Intelligence, 
strength of character, good humor, these were the quali- 
ties which even a casual observer could read in' the 
countenance of Brain Elshaw. 

But the lad had more in him than that. He had ambi- 
tion, vague as yet, dogged tenacity of purpose, imagina- 
tion, feeling, fire. There was the stuff of a man of no 
common kind in the young workman. 

Josiah Cornthwaite looked at him long and critically 
before answering his son’s remark. 

“Yes,” said he at last slowly, “I daresay he’s fit for 
something better — indeed, Fm sure of it. But it doesn’t 
do to bring these young fellows on too fast. If he gets 
too much encouragement he will turn into an inventor 
(you know the sort of chap that’s the common pest of a 
manufacturing town, always worrying about some pre- 


A PAIR OF BROWN EYES. 


cious ‘ invention ’ that turns out to have been invented 
long ago, or to be utterly worthless), and never do a stroke 
of honest work again.” 

“ Now, I don’t think Elshaw’s that sort of chap,” said 
Chris, who looked upon Bram as in some sort his protege, 
whose merit would be reflected on himself. Anyhow, I 
think it would be worth your while to give him a trial, 
sir.” 

“ But he would never go hack to this work afterwards 
if he proved a failure in the office.” 

“ Not here, certainly.” 

“ And we should lose a very good workman,” persisted 
Mr. Cornthwaite, who had conservative notions upon the 
subject of promotion from the ranks. 

“ Well, I believe it would turn out all right,” said 
Chris. 

Ilis father was about to reply when his attention was 
diverted by the sudden appearance, at the extreme end of 
the long avenue of sheds and workshops, of two persons 
who, to judge by the frown which instantly clouded his 
face, were very unwelcome. 

‘^That old rascal again! That old rascal Theodore 
Biron ! Come to borrow again, of course ! But I won’t 
see him. I won’t ” 

“ But, Claire, don’t be too hard on the old sinner, for 
the girl’s sake, sir,” said Chris hastily, cutting short his 
protests. 

Mr. Cornthwaite turned sharply upon his son. 

“ Yes, the old fox is artful enough for that. He uses 
his daughter to get himself received where he himself 
wouldn’t be tolerated for two minutes. And I’ve no 
doubt the little minx is up to every move on the board 
too.” 

“ Oh, come, sir, you’re too hard,” protested Chris with 
real warmth, and with more earnestness than he had 
shown on the subject either of his own career or of Bram’s. 
“ I’d stake my head for what it’s worth, and I suppose 
you’d say that isn’t much, on the girl’s being all right.” 

But this championship did not please his father at all. 


10 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


Josiah Cornthwaite’s bushy white eyebrows met over his 
black eyes, and his handsome, ruddy-complexioned face 
lost its color. Chris was astonished, and regretted his 
own warmth, as his father answered in the tones he could 
remember dreading when he was a small boy — 

“ Whether she’s all right or all wrong, I warn you not 
to trouble your head about her. You may rely upon my 
doing the best I can for her, on account of my relation- 
ship to her mother. But I would never countenance an 
alliance between the family of that old reprobate and 
mine.” 

But to this Chris responded with convincing alacrity — 

“An alliance! Good heavens, no, sir! We suffer 
quite enough at the hands of the old nuisance already. 
And I have no idea, I assure you, of throwing myself 
away.” 

Josiah Cornthwaite still kept his shrewd black eyes 
fixed upon his son, and he seemed to be satisfied with 
what he read in the face of the latter, for he presently 
turned away with a nod of satisfaction as Theodore 
Biron and his daughter, who had perhaps been lingering 
a little until the great man’s first annoyance at the sight 
of them had blown over, came near enough for a meeting. 

“Ah, Mr. Cornthwaite, surely there’s no sight in the 
world to beat this,” began the dapper little man airily as 
he held out a small, slender, and remarkably well-shaped 
hand with a flourish, and kept his eyes all the time upon 
the men at work in the nearest shed as if the sight had 
too much fascination for him to be able readily to with- 
draw his eyes. “ This,” he went on, apparently not notic- 
ing that Mr. Cornthwaite’s handshake was none of the 
warmest, “ of a whole community immersed in the no- 
blest of all occupations, the turning of the innocent, life- 
less substances of the earth into tool and wheel, ship and 
carriage ! I must say that this place has a charm for 
me which I have never found in the fairest spots of Swit- 
zerland; that after seeing whatever was to be seen in 
California, the States, the Himalayas, Russia, and the 
rest of it, I have always been ready to say, not exactly 



<•'4'^'' . '•V' 


i ( 


Ah, Mr. Cornthwaite, surely there’s no sight in the world to beat 


this. 




Page 10 




A PAIR OF BROWN EYES. 


11 


with the poet, but with a full heart, ‘ Give me Sheffield ! ’ 
And to-day, when I came to have a look at the works,” 
he wound up in a less lofty tone, “I thought I would 
bring my little Claire to have a peep too. 

In spite of the absurdity of his harangue, Theodore 
Biron knew how to throw into his voice and manner so 
much fervor. He spoke, he gesticulated with so much 
buoyancy and effect, that his hearers were amused and 
interested in spite of themselves, and were carried away, 
for the time at least, into believing, or half-believing, that 
he was in earnest. 

Josiah Cornthwaite, always accessible to flattery on 
the matter of “ the works,” as the artful Theodore knew, 
suffered himself to smile a little as he turned to Claire. 

“ And so you have to be sacriflced, and must consent 
to be bored to please papa ? ” 

“ Oh, I shan’t be bored. I shall like it,” said Claire. 

She spoke in a little thread of a musical, almost child- 
ish, voice, and very shyly. But as she did so, uttering 
only these simple words, a great change took place in 
her. Before she spoke no one would have said more of 
her than that she was a quiet, modest-looking, perhaps 
rather insignificant, little girl, and that her gray frock 
was neat and well-fitting. 

But no sooner did she open her mouth to speak or to 
smile than the little olive-skinned face broke into all 
sorts of pretty dimples. The black eyes made up for 
what they lacked in size by their sparkle and brilliancy, 
and the two rows of little ivory teeth helped the dazzling 
effect. 

Then Claire Biron was charming. Then even Josiah 
Cornthwaite forgot to ask himself whether she was not 
cunning. Then Chris stroked his mustache, and told 
himself with complacency that he had done a good deed 
in standing up for the poor, little thing. 

But rough Bram Elshaw, whom Chris had beckoned to 
come forward, and who stood respectfully in the back- 
ground, waiting to know for what he was wanted, felt as 
if he had received an electric shock. 


12 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


Bram was held very unsusceptible to feminine influ- 
ences. He was what the factory and shop lasses of the 
town called a hard nut to crack, a close-fisted customer, 
and other terms of a like opprobrious nature. Occupied 
with his books, those everlasting books, and with his 
vague dreams of something indefinite and as yet far out 
of his reach, he had, at this ripe age of twenty, looked 
down upon such members of the frivolous sex as came in 
his way, and dreamed of something fairer in the shape of 
womanhood, something to which a pretty young actress 
whom he had seen at one of the theatres in the part of 
“ Lady Betty Noel,” had given more definite form. 

And now quite suddenly, in the broad light of an Au- 
gust morning, with nothing more romantic than the roll- 
ing mill for a background, there had broken in upon his 
startled imagination the creature the sight of whom he 
seemed to have been waiting for. As he stood there mo- 
tionless, his eyes riveted, his ears tingling with the very 
sound of her voice, he felt that a revelation had been 
made to him. 

As if revealed in one magnetic flash, he saw in a mo- 
ment what it was that woman meant to man ; saw the at- 
traction that the rough lads of his acquaintance found in 
the slovenly, noisy girls of their own courts and alleys ; 
stood transfixed, coarse-handed son of toil that he was, 
under the spell of love. 

The voice of Chris Cornthwaite close to his ear startled 
him out of a stupor of intoxication. 

“ What’s the matter with you, Bram ? You look as if 
you’d been struck by lightning. You are to go round the 
works with Miss Biron and explain things, you know. 
And listen” (he might well have to recall Bram’s wan- 
dering attention, for this command had thrown the lad 
into a sort of frenzy, on which he found it difiScult enough 
to suppress all outward signs), “I have something much 
more important to tell you than that.” But Bram’s face 
was a blank. “You are to come up to the Park next 
Thursday evening, and I think you’ll find my father has 
something to say to you that you’ll be glad to hear. And 


CLAIRE. 


13 


mind this, Bram, it was I who put him up to it. It’s me 
you’ve got to thank.” 

“ Thank you, sir,” said Bram, touching his cap respect- 
fully, and trying to speak as if he felt grateful. 

But he was not. He felt no emotion whatever. lie 
was stupefied by the knowledge that he was to go round 
the works with Miss Biron. 


CHAPTER 11. 

CXiAIIiiEj* 

Bram wondered how Mr. Christian could give up the 
pleasure of showing Miss Biron round the works himself. 
Christian’s partiality for feminine society was as great as 
his popularity with it, and as well known. The partiality, 
but not perhaps the popularity, was inherited from his 
father — at least, so folks said. 

And Bram Elshaw, looking about for a reason for this 
extraordinary conduct on the part of the young master, 
and noting the wistfulness of that young man’s glances 
and the displeasure on the face of the elder Mr. Corn- 
thwaite, came very near to a correct diagnosis of the case. 

Bram was always the person chosen to carry messages 
between the works and Holme Park, the private residence 
of the Cornthwaites, and the household talk had filtered 
through to him about Theodore Biron, the undesirable 
relation of French extraction, who had settled down too 
near, and whose visits had become too frequent for his 
rich kinsman’s pleasure. And the theory of the servants 
was that these visits were always paid with the object of 
borrowing money. 

Hot that Theodore looked like an impecunious person. 
To Bram’s inexperienced eyes Mr Biron and his daughter 
looked like people of boundless wealth and great distinc- 
tion. Theodore, indeed, was if anything better dressed 
than either of the Cornthwaites. His black morning 


14 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


coat fitted him perfectly; his driving gloves were new; 
his hat sat jauntily on his head. From his tall white col- 
lar to his tight new boots he was the picture of a trim, 
youthful-looking country gentleman of the smart and 
rather amateurish type. 

He had a thin, small-featured face, light hair, light 
eyebrows, and the smallest of light moustaches; pale, 
surprised eyes, and the slimmest pair of feminine white 
hands that ever man had. Of these he was proud ; and 
so his gloves kept their new appearance for a long time, 
as he generally carried them in his hand. 

As for Claire, she not only looked better dressed than 
either Mrs. or Miss Cornthwaite, but better dressed than 
any of the ladies of the neighborhood. And this was 
not Bram’s fancy only ; it was solid fact. 

Claire Biron had never been in France, and her mother 
had been an Englishwoman of Yorkshire descent. But 
through her father she had inherited from her French 
ancestors just that touch of feminine genius which makes 
a woman neat without severity, and smart looking with- 
out extravagance. 

In her plain gray frock and big yellow chip hat with 
the white gauze rosettes, the little slender, dark eyed 
girl looked as nice as no ordinary English girl would 
think of making herself except for some special occasion. 

Bram had not the nicely critical faculty to enable him 
to discern things. All he knew, as he walked through 
the black dust with Miss Biron and pointed out to her 
the different processes which were going on, was that 
every glance she gave him in acknowledgment of the 
information he was obliged to bawl in her ear was intox- 
icating ; that every insignificant comment she made rang 
in his very heart with a delicious thrill of pleasure he 
had never felt before. 

And behind them followed the two older gentleman, 
Mr. Cornthwaite explaining, commenting, softening in 
spite of himself under the artful interest taken in every 
dryest detail by the airy Theodore, who trotted jauntily 
beside him ; and grew enthusiastic over everything. 


CLAIRE. 


15 


Before very long, however, Mr. Cornthwaite, who was 
getting excited against his will over that hobby of “ the 
works ” which Theodore managed so cleverly, drew his 
companion away to show him a new process which they 
were in course of testing ; and for a moment Bram and 
Miss Claire were left alone together. 

And then a strange thing, a thing which opened Bram’s 
eyes, happened. From some corner, some nook, sprang 
Chris, and, hooking his arm with affectionate familiarity 
within that of Miss Biron, he said — 

“ All right, Elshaw ; I’ll show the rest. Come along 
Claire.” 

And in an instant he had whirled away with the 
young lady, who began to laugh and to protest, round the 
nearest corner. 

Bram was left standing stupidly, with a feeling rising 
in his heart which he could not understand. What was 
this that had happened? Nothing but the most natural 
thing in the world ; and the impulse of sullen resentment 
which stirred within him was ridiculous. There was, 
there could be, no rivalry possible between Mr. Christian 
Cornthwaite, the son of the owner of the works, and Bram 
Elshaw, a workman in his father’s employment. And 
Miss Biron was a lady as far above him (Bram) as the 
Queen was. 

This was what Bram told himself as, with hard-set jaw 
and a lowering look of discontent on his face, he quietly 
went back to his work. 

But the matter was not ended with him. As he went 
on mechanically with his task, as he bent over the great 
steel bar with his long rod, his thoughts were with the 
pair, the well-matched, handsome pair of lovers, as he 
supposed them to be, who had flitted off together as soon 
as papa’s back was turned. 

Now what did that mean ? 

If it had been any other young lady Bram would not 
have given the matter a second thought. Christian Corn- 
thwaite’s flirtations were as the sand of the sea for multi- 
tude, and he would bring half-a-dozen different girls in a 


16 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


week to “ see over the works ” when papa could be relied 
upon to be out of the way. Christian had the easy assur- 
ance, the engaging, irresponsible manners which always 
make their possessor a favorite with the unwise sex, 
and was reported to be able to win the favor of a prude 
in less time than it takes another man to gain the smiles 
of a coquette. 

And so where was the wonder that this universal fav- 
orite should be a favorite with Miss Biron ? Of course, 
there was nothing in the fact to be wondered at, but the 
infatuated Bram would have had this particular lady 
as different from other ladies in this respect as he held 
her superior in every other. 

But then a fresh thought, which was like a dagger 
thrust on the one hand, yet which brought some bitter- 
sweet comfort for all that, came into his mind. Surely 
Miss Biron was not the sort of girl to allow such famil- 
iarity except from the man whom she had accepted for a 
husband. Surely, then, these two were engaged — with- 
out the consent, or even the knowledge, of Mr. Corn- 
thwaite very likely, but promising themselves that they 
would get that consent some day. 

And as he came to this decision Bram looked black. 

And all the time that these fancies chased each other 
through his excited brain this lad of twenty retained a 
saner self which stood outside the other and smiled, and 
told him that he was an infatuated young fool, a moon- 
struck idiot, to tumble headlong into love with a girl of 
whom he knew nothing except that she was as far above 
him, and of all thought of him, as the stars are above the 
sea. 

And he was right in thinking that there was not a man 
in all that crowd of his rough fellow- workmen who would 
not have jeered at him and looked down upon him as a 
hopeless ass if they had known what his thoughts and 
feelings were. But for all that there was the making in 
Bram Elshaw, with his dreams and his fancies, of a man 
who would rise to be master of them all. 

Out of the heat of the furnace and the glowing iron 


CLAIRE. 


17 


Bram Elshaw presently passed into the heat of the sun, 
and stood for a moment, his long rod in his hand, and 
wiped the sweat from his face and neck. And before he 
could turn to go back again he heard a little sound behind 
him which was not a rustle, or a flutter, or anything he 
could describe, but which he knew to be the sound of a 
woman moving quickly in her skirts. And the next mo- 
ment Miss Biron appeared a couple of feet away from 
him, smiling and growing a little pink as a young girl 
does when she feels herself slightly embarrassed by an 
unaccustomed situation. 

Before she spoke Bram guessed by the position in which 
she held her little closed right hand that she was 
going to offer him money. And he drew himself up a 
little, and blushed a much deeper red than the girl — not 
with anger, for after all was it not just what he might 
have expected ? But with a keener sense than ever of 
the difference between them. 

Miss Biron had begun to speak, had got as far as “ I 
wanted to thank you for explaining everything so nicely,” 
when something in his look caused her to stop and hesi- 
tate and look down. 

She was suddenly struck with the fact that this was 
no common workman, this pale, grimy young Yorkshire- 
man with the strong jaw and the clear, steady eyes, al- 
though he was dressed in an old shirt blackened by coal 
dust, and trousers packed with pieces of sacking tied 
round with string. 

“ Ah’m reeght glad to ha’ been of any service to yer. 
Miss,” said Bram in a very gentle tone. 

There was a moment’s silence, during which Miss Biron 
finally made up her mind what to do. Looking up quickly, 
with the blush still in her face, she said, “Thank you 
very much. Good-morning,” and, to Bram s great relief, 
turned away without offering him the money. 

2 


18 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


CHAPTER III. 

SOMETHING WRONG AT THE FARM. 

It is certain that Bram Elshaw was still thinking more 
of Miss Biron than of the communication which Mr. 
Cornthwaite was to make to him when he presented him- 
self at the back door of his employer’s residence on the 
following Thursday evening. 

Holme Park was on the side of one of the hills which 
surround the city of ShefiBeld, and was a steep, charm- 
ingly-wooded piece of grass and from a small plateau in 
which the red brick house looked down at the rows of 
new red brick cottages, at the factory chimneys, and the 
smoke clouds of the hive below. 

Bram had always taken his messages to the back door 
of the house, but he was shrewd enough to guess, from 
the altered manner of the servant who now let him in 
and conducted him at once to the library, that this was 
the last time he should have to enter by that way. 

And he was right. Mr Cornthwaite was as precise in 
manner, as business-like as usual, but his tone was also a 
little different, as he told Bram that his obvious abilities 
were, thrown away on his present occupation, and that he 
was willing to take him into his office, if he cared to come, 
without any premium. 

Bram thanked him, and accepted the offer, but he showed 
no more than conventional gratitude. The shrewd young 
Yorkshireman was really more grateful than he seemed, 
but he saw that his employer was acting in his own in- 
terest rather than from benevolence, and, although he 
made no objections to the smallness of the salary he was 
to receive, he modestly but firmly refused to bind him- 
self for any fixed period. 

“ Ah may be a failure, sir,” he objected quietly, “ and 
Ah should like to be free to goa back to ma auld work if 
Ah was.” 


SOMETHING WRONG AT THE FARM. 


19 


So the bargain was struck on his own terms, and he 
retired respectfully just as a servant entered the library 
to announce that Miss Biron wished to see Mr. Corn- 
thwaite. And at the same moment the young girl herself 
tripped into the room, with a worried and anxious look 
on her face. 

Mr. Cornthwaite rose from his chair with a frown of 
annoyance. 

“ My dear Claire, your father really should not allow 
you to come this long way by yourself — at night, too. It 
is neither proper nor safe. By the time dinner is over it 
will be dark, and you have a long way to go.” 

“ Oh, but lam going back at once, as soon as you have 
read this,” said Claire, putting a little note fastened up 
into a cocked hat like a lady’s, into his unwilling hand. 
“And perhaps Christian would see me as far as the town, 
if you think I ought not to go alone.” 

But this suggestion evidently met with no approval 
from Mr. Cornthwaite, who shook his head, signed to 
Bram to remain in the room and began to read the note, 
all at the same time. 

“ My dear,” said he shortly, as he finished reading and 
crumpled it up, “ Christian is engaged at present. But 
young Elshaw here will show you into your tram, won’t 
you, Elshaw ? ” 

“Certainly, sir.” Bram, who had the handle of the 
door in his hand, saluted his employer, and retreated 
into the hall before Claire, who had not recognized him 
in his best clothes, had time to look at him again. 

“ A most respectable young fellow, my dear, though a 
little rough. One of my clerks,” Bram heard Mr. Corn- 
thwaite explain rapidly to Miss Biron as he shut himself 
out into the hall and w^aited. 

Bram was divided between delight that he was to have 
the precious privilege of accompanying Miss Biron on her 
journey home, and a sense of humiliation caused by the 
shrewd suspicion that she would not like this arrange- 
ment. 

But when a few minutes later Claire came out of the 


20 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


library all his thoughts were turned to compassion for 
the poor girl, who had evidently received a heavy blow, 
and who had diflaculty in keeping back her tears. She 
dashed past him out of the house, and he followed at a 
distance, perceiving that she had forgotten him, and that 
his duty would be limited to seeing without her knowl- 
edge that she got safely home. 

So when she got into a tram car at the bottom of the 
hill outside the park he got on the top. When she got 
out at St. Paul’s Church, and darted away through the 
crowded streets in the direction of the Corn Exchange, he 
followed. Treading through the crowds of people who 
filled the roadway as well as the pavement, she fled along 
at such a pace that Bram had difficulty in keeping her 
little figure in view. She drew away at last from the 
heart of the town, and began the ascent of one of the 
stony streets, lined with squalid, cold-looking cottages, 
that fringe the smoke- wreathed city on its north-eastern 
side. 

Bram followed. 

Once out of the town, and still going upwards, Claire 
Bironfled like a hare up a steep lane, turned sharply to 
the left, and plunged into a narrow passage, with a broken 
stone wall on each side, which ran between two open 
fields. This passage gave place to a rough footpath, and 
at this point the girl stood still, her gaze arrested by a 
strange sight on the higher ground on the right. 

It was dark by this time, and the outline of the 
hill above, broken by a few cottages, a solitary tall chim- 
ney at the mouth of a disused coal pit, and a group of 
irregular farm buildings, was soft and blurred. 

But the windows of the farmhouse were all ablaze with 
light. A long, plain stone building very near the sum- 
mit of the hill, and holding a commanding situation above 
a sudden dip into green pasture land, the unpretending 
homestead dominated the landscape and blinked fiery 
eyes at Claire, who uttered a low cry, and then dashed 
away from the footpath by a short cut across the fields, 
making straight for the house. 


CLAIRE’S APOLOGY. 


21 


All the blinds were up, and groups of candles could be 
seen on the tables within, all flickering in the draught, 
while the muslin curtains in the lower rooms were blown 
by the evening wind into dangerous proximity to the 
lights. 

And in all the house there was not a trace of a living 
creature to be seen, although from where Brain stood he 
could see into every room. 

He followed still, uneasy and curious, as Claire climbed 
the garden wall with the agility of a boy, and ran up to 
the house door. 

It was locked. Nothing daunted, she mounted on the 
ledge of the nearest window, which was open only at the 
top, threw up the sash, and got into the room. 

A moment later she had blown out all the candles. 
Then she ran from room to room, extinguishing the lights, 
all in full view of the wondering Bram, who stood watch- 
ing her movements from the lawn, until the whole front 
of the house was in complete darkness. 

Then she disappeared, and for a few minutes Bram 
could see nothing, hear nothing. 

But presently from the back part of the rooms, there 
came to his listening ears a long, shrill cry. 


CHAPTER IV. 
claiee’s apology. 

The effect of that cry upon Bram Elshaw was to set 
him tingling in every nerve. 

The lawn which ran the length of the farmhouse was 
wide, and sloped down to a straggling hedge just inside 
the low stone wall which surrounded the garden and the 
orchard. Up and down this lawn Bram walked with 
hurried footsteps, uncertain what to do. For although 
he recognized Claire’s voice, the cry she had uttered 
seemed to him to indicate surprise and horror rather 


22 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


than pain, so that he did not feel justified in entering the 
house by the way she had done until he felt more sure 
that his assistance was wanted, or that his intrusion 
would be welcome. 

In a very few moments, however, he heard her cry — 
“Don’t, don’t; oh, don’t ! You frighten me! ” 

Bram, who was by this time close to the door, knocked 
at it loudly. 

Waiting a few moments, on the alert for any fresh 
sounds, and hearing nothing, he then made his way round 
to the back of the house, leaping over the rough stone 
wall which divided the garden from the farmyard, and 
tried the handle of the back door. 

This also was fastened on the inside. 

But at the very moment that Bram lifted the latch 
and gave the door a rough shake he heard a sound like 
the clashing of steel upon stone, a scuffle, a suppressed 
cry, and upon that, without further hesitation, Bram put 
his sinewy knee against the old door, and at the second 
attempt burst the bolt off. 

There was no light inside the house except that which 
came from the fire in an open range on the right ; but by 
this Bram saw that he was in an enormous stone-paved 
kitchen, with open rafters above, a relic of the time when 
the farmer was not one of the gentlefolk, but dined with 
his family and his laborers at a huge deal table under 
the pendant hams and bunches of dried herbs which in 
the old days used to dangle from the rough-hewn 
beams. 

Bram, however, noticed nothing but that a door on the 
opposite side of the kitchen was swinging back as if some 
one had just passed through, and he sprang across the 
stone fiags and threw it open. 

There was a little oil lamp on a bracket against the 
wall in the wide hall in which he found himself. Stand- 
ing with his back to the solid oak panels of the front 
door, brandishing a naked cavalry sword of old-fashioned 
pattern, stood the airy Theodore Biron in dressing-gown 
and slippers, with his hair in disorder, his face very much 


CLAIRE’S APOLOGY. 23 

flushed, and his little fair moustache twisted up into a 
flerce-looking point at each end. 

On the lowest step of a Avide oak staircase, which took 
up about twice the space it ought to have done in pro- 
portion to the size of the hall, stood little Claire, pale, 
trembling with fright, trying to keep her alarm out of 
her voice, as she coaxed her father to put down the 
sword and go to bed. 

“ Drunk ! Mad drunk ! ” thought Bram as he took in 
the situation at a glance. 

At sight of the intruder, whom she did not in the least 
recognize, Claire stopped short in the midst of her 
entreaties. 

“What are you doing here? Who are you?” asked 
she, turning upon him fiercely. 

The sudden appearance of the stranger, instead of 
further infuriating Mr. Biron, as might have been feared, 
struck him for an instant into decorum and quiescence. 
Lowering the point of the weapon he had been brandish- 
ing, he seemed for a moment to wait with curiosity for 
the answer to his daughter’s question. 

When, however, Bram answered, in a respectful and 
shame-faced manner, that he had heard her call out and 
feared she might be in need of help, Theodore’s energy 
returned with full force, and he made a wild pass or two 
in the direction of the young man, with a recommen- 
dation to him to be prepared. 

Claire’s terrors returned with full force. 

“Oh, father, don’t, don’t! You’ll hurt him!” she 
cried piteously. 

But the entreaty only served to whet Theodore’s 
appetite for blood. 

“ Hurt him ! I mean to ! I mean to have his life ! ” 
shouted he, while his light eyes seemed to be starting 
from his head. 

And, indeed, it seemed as if he would proceed to carry 
out this threat, when Bram, to the terror of Claire and 
the evident astonishment of her father, rushed upon 
Theodore, and, cleverly avoiding the thrust which the 


24 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


latter made at him, seized the hilt of the sword, and 
wrested it from his grasp. 

It was a bold act, and one which needed some address. 
Mr Biron was for the moment sobered by his amaze- 
ment. 

“Give me back my sword, you impudent rascal!” 
cried he, making as he spoke a vain attempt to regain 
possession of the weapon. 

But Bram, who was a good deal stronger than he 
looked, kept him off easily with his right hand, while he 
retained a tight hold on the sword with his left. 

“You shall have it back to-morrow reeght enough,” 
said Bram good-humoredly. “ But maybe it’ll be safer 
outside t’house till ye feel more yerself like. Miss Claire 
yonder knaws it’s safe wi’ me.” 

“ Oh, yes ; oh, yes,” panted Claire eagerly, though in 
truth she had not the least idea who this mysterious 
knight-errant was. “Let him have it, father; it’s per- 
fectly safe with him.” 

But this action of his daughter’s in siding with the 
enemy filled Mr Biron with disgust. With great dignity, 
supporting himself against the wall as he spoke, and 
gesticulating emphatically with his right hand, while 
with his left he fumbled about for his gold pince-nez, he 
said in solemn tones — 

“I give this well-meaning but m-m-muddle-headed 
young man credit for the best intentions in the world. 
But same time I demand that he should give up my 
p-p-property, and that he should take himself off m-m-my 
premises without furth’ delay.” 

“ Certainly, sir. Good-evening,” said Bram. 

And without waiting to hear any more of Mr Biron’s 
protests, or heeding his cries of “ Stop thief ! ” Bram ran 
out as fast as he could by the way he had come, leav- 
ing the outer door, which he had damaged on his forcible 
entry, to slam behind him. 

Once outside the farmyard, however, he found himself 
in a difficulty, being suddenly stopped by a farm laborer, 
in whom his rapid exit from the house had not unnatur- 


CLAIRE’S APOLOGY. 


25 

ally aroused suspicions, which were not allayed by the 
sight of the drawn sword in his hand. 

“ Eh, mon, who art ta ? And where art agoin’ ? ” 

Bram pointed to the house. 

“ There’s a mon in yonder has gotten t’ jumps,” ex- 
plained he simply, “ and he was wa-aving this ahaht’s 
head. So Ah took it away from ’un.” 

The other man grinned, and nodded. 

“ T’ mester’s took that way sometimes,” said he. “ But 
this sword’s none o’ tha property, anyway.” 

Bram looked back at the house. Nobody had followed 
him out ; even the damaged door had been left gaping 
open. 

“ Ah want a word wi’ t’ young lady,” said he. “ She 
knaws me. I work for Mr. Cornthwaite down at t’ works 
in t’ town yonder.” 

“Oh, ay; Ah’ve heard of ’un. He’s gotten t’ coin, 
and,” with a significant gesture in the direction of the 
farmhouse, “ we haven’t.” 

“You work on t’ farm here?” asked Bram. 

The man answered in a tone and with a look which 
implied that affairs on the farm were in anything but a 
fiourishing condition — 

“ Ay, Ah work on t’ farm.” 

And, apparently satisfied of the honesty of Bram’s in- 
tentions, or else careless of the safety of his master’s prop- 
erty, the laborer nodded good-night, and walked up the 
hill towards a straggling row of cottages which bordered 
the higher side of the road near the summit. 

Bram got back into the farmyard, and waited for the 
appearance at the broken door of some occupant of the 
house to whom he could make his excuses for the damage 
he had done. He had a shrewd suspicion who that oc- 
cupant would be. Since all the noise and commotion he 
and Theodore Biron had made had not brought a single 
servant upon the scene, it was natural to infer that Mr. 
Biron and his daughter had the house to themselves. 

And this idea filled Bram with wonder and compassion. 
What a life for a young girl, who had seemed to rough 


26 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


Bram the epitome of all womanly beauty and grace and 
charm, was this which accident had revealed to him. A 
life full of humiliations, of terrors, of anxieties which 
would have broken the heart and the spirit of many an 
older woman. Instead of being a spoilt young beauty, 
with every wish forestalled, every caprice gratified, his 
goddess was only a poor little girl who lived in an atmos- 
phere of petty cares, petty worries, under the shadow of 
a great trouble, her father’s vice of drink. 

And as he thought about the girl in this new aspect 
his new-born infatuation seemed to die away, the glamour 
and the glow faded, and he thought of her only as a poor 
little nestling which, deprived of its natural right of 
warmth and love and tenderness, lives a starved life, but 
bears its privations with a brave look. 

And as he leaned against the yellow-washed wall he 
heard a slight noise, and started up. 

Miss Biron, candlestick in hand, was examining the in- 
juries done to her back door. 

Bram opened his mouth to speak, but he stammered 
and uttered something unintelligible, taken aback as he 
was by the vast difference between the fancy picture he 
had been drawing of the young lady and the reality with 
which he was confronted. 

For instead of the wan, white face, the streaming eyes, 
the anxious and weary look he had expected to see, he 
found himself face to face with a cheery little creature, 
brisk in movement, bright of eyes, who looked up with a 
start when he appeared before her, and said rather 
sharply — 

“ This is your doing, 1 suppose ? And instead of being 
scolded for the mischief you have done you expect to be 
thanked and perhaps rewarded, no doubt ? ” 

At first Bram could scarcely believe his ears. 

« Ah’m sorry for t’ damage Ah’ve done, miss,” he said 
hurriedly. “ And that’s what Ah’ve waited for to tell 
yer, nowt but that. But it’s not so bad as it looks. It’s 
nobbut t’ bolt sprung off and a scratch to the paint out- 
side. If you can let me have a look into your tool-chest, 


CLAIRE’S APOLOGY. 27 

Ah’ll set it reght at once. And for t’ paint, Ah’ll come 
up for that to-morrow neght.” 

Miss Biron smiled graciously. The humble Bram had 
his sense of humor tickled by the airs she was giving 
herself now, as if she had forgotten altogether her 
helpless fright of only an hour before, and the re- 
lief with which she had hailed his disarming of her 
father. 

“ Well, that’s only fair, isn’t it ? ” said she with a bright 
smile, as she instantly acted upon his advice by disap- 
pearing into the house like a flash of lightning. 

Bram heard the rattling of tools, and as it went on 
some time without apparent result, he stepped inside the 
door to see if he could be of any assistance. 

Claire had thrown open the door of a cupboard to the 
left of the wide hearth, and was standing on a Windsor 
chair turning over the contents of a couple of biscuit tins 
on the top shelf. Bram, slow step by slow step, came 
nearer and nearer, fascinated by every rapid movement 
of this, the first feminine creature who had ever aroused 
his interest. How small her feet were ! Bram looked at 
them, and then turned away his head, as if he had been 
guilty of something sacrilegious. And the movement of 
her arm as she turned over the odds and ends in the 
boxes, the bend of her dark head as she looked down, 
fllled him afresh with that strange new sense of wonder 
and delight with which she had inspired him on his flrst 
sight of her at the works. Against the light of the candle, 
which she had placed on the shelf, he saw her proflle in 
a new aspect, in which it looked prettier, more childlike 
than ever. 

“ Better give me t’ box, miss,” suggested Bram pres- 
ently. 

Miss Biron started, not knowing that he was so near. 

“ Very well,” said she. “ You can look, but I am afraid 
you won’t And any proper tools here at all.” 

She was right. But Bram was clever with his hands 
as well as with his head, and he could “ make things do.” 
So that in a very few minutes he was at work upon the 


28 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


door, while Miss Biron held the light for him, and watched 
his nimble movements with interest. 

And while she watched him it occurred to her, now 
that she felt quite sure he was no mere idler who had 
burst his way into the house from curiosity, that she had 
been by no means as grateful for his timely entrance as 
he had had a right to expect. And the candle began to 
shake in her hands as she glanced at him rather shyly, 
and wondered how, without casting blame upon her 
father, she could make amends to this methodical, quiet, 
and rather mysterious young Orson for the part he had 
taken in the whole affair. 

“ I’m really very much obliged to you,” she said at last, 
with a very great change in her manner from the rather 
haughty airs she had previously assumed. “ I 

She hesitated, and stopped. Bram had glanced quickly 
up at her, and then his eyes had flashed rapidly back to 
his work again. 

“I seem to know your face,” said she with a manner 
in which sudden shyness struggled with a sense of the 
dignity it was necessary for her to maintain in these novel 
circumstances. “ Where have I met you before ? And 
what is your name ? ” she added quickly, as a fresh sus- 
picion rushed into her mind. 

“My name is Elshaw, miss. Bram Elshaw,” he an- 
swered, as he sat back on his heels and hunted again in 
the biscuit tin. “ And I’ve seen you. I saw you t’ other 
day, last Tuesday, at Mr. CorntWaite’s works. It was 
me showed you round, miss.” 

« Oh ! ” 

The bright little face of the girl was clouded with be- 
wilderment. 

“ And then again Ah saw you to-neght up to Mr. Corn- 
thwaite’s house, up at t’ Park. And he told me for to 
see you home, miss.” 

“ Oh! ” 

This time the exclamation was one of confusion, annoy- 
ance, almost of horror. 

“ I remember ! He said — he said — he would send some 


CLAIRE’S APOLOGY. 


29 


one to see me home. But — er — er — I was in such a hurry 
— that — that I forgot. And I ran olf by myself. And — 
and so you followed ; you must have followed me 1 ** 

And Claire’s pretty face grew red as fire. 

The truth was she had been angry with Mr. Corn- 
thwaite for the manner of his reception, for the dry re- 
marks he had made about her father, and for his manifest 
and most ungracious unwillingness to allow Christian to 
see her home. And she had made up her mind that no 
“ respectable young man ” of Mr. Cornthwaite’s choosing 
should accompany her if Chris might not. And so, dash- 
ing off through the park in the dusk by a short cut, she 
had thought to escape the ignominy which Mr. Corn- 
thwaite had designed for her. 

Brain, with a long, rusty nail between his teeth, grew 
redder than she. In an instant he understood what he 
had not understood before, that the young lady had taken 
the offer of his escort as a humiliation. She had wanted 
to go back with Christian, and Mr. Cornthwaite had 
wished to put her off with one of his workmen ! Bram 
felt that her indignation was just, although he was 
scarcely stoical enough not to feel a pang. 

“You see, miss,” he said apologetically, taking the nail 
out of his mouth, “ Ah was bound to come this weay, 
and so Ah couldn’t help but follow you. And — and when 
Ah heard you call aht — why Ah couldn’t help but get in. 
Ah’ra reght sorry if Ah seemed to be taking a liberty, 
miss.” 

Again Claire was struck as she had been that day at 
the works by the innate superiority of the man to his 
social position, of his tone to his accent. 

“ It was very lucky for me — I am very glad, very grate- 
ful,” said she hurriedly, in evident distress, which was 
most touching to her hearer. “I don’t know what I 
should have done — I — I must explain to you. You must 
not think my father would have done me any harm,” she 
went on earnestly, with a great fear at her heart that 
Bram would report these occurrences to his employer, and 
furnish him with another excuse for slighting her father. 


30 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“He gets like that sometimes, especially in the hot 
weather,” she went on quickly, and with so much inten- 
sity that it was difficult to doubt her faith in the story. 
“ He was in the army once, and he had a sword-cut on 
the head when he was out in India. And it makes him 
excitable, very excitable. But it never lasts long. Now 
he is fast asleep, and to-morrow morning he will be quite 
himself, quite himself again. You won’t say anything 
about it to Mr. Cornthwaite, will you?” she wound up, 
with a sidelong look of entreaty, as Bram, having fin- 
ished his task, rose to his feet and picked up the coat he 
had thrown off before setting to work. 

“No, miss.” 

There was something in his tone, in his look, as he 
said just those two words which inspired Claire with 
absolute confidence. 

“ Thank you,” she said. “ Thank you very much.” 

And Bram understood that her gratitude covered the 
whole ground, and took in his forcible entrance, the time 
he had spent in mending the door, and his final promise. 

“ And Ah’ll look in to-morrow neght, miss,” said he as he 
turned in the doorway and noticed how sleepy her brown 
eyes were beginning to look, “ and give a coat of paint 
to’t.” 

“Oh, you need not. It’s very good of you.” 

He touched his cap, and turned to go ; but as he was 
turning, Claire, blushing very much, and conscious of this 
confiict between conventionality and her sense of what 
she owed to this dignified young workman, who could 
not be rewarded with a “ tip,” thrust out her little 
hand. 

Then Bram’s behavior was for the moment rather em- 
barrassing. The privilege of touching her fingers, of 
holding the hand which had stirred in him so many 
strange reflections for a moment in his own, as if they 
had been friends, equals, was one which he could not ac- 
cept with perfect equanimity. She saw that he started, 
and, blushing more than ever, she seemed in doubt as to 
whether she should withdraw her hand. But, seeing her 


BEAM’S RISE IN LIFE. 


31 


hesitation, Bram mastered himself, took the hand she 
offered, wrung it in a strong grip, and walked quickly 
away towards the gate. 

He felt as if he was in Heaven. 


CHAPTER V. 
beam’s eise in life. 

What was there about this little brown-eyed girl that 
she should bewitch him like this ? Bram, who flattered 
himself that he had his wits about him, who had kept 
himself haughtily free from love entanglements up to 
now, could not understand it. And the most amazing 
part of it all was that his feelings about her seemed to 
undergo an entire change every half-hour or so. At least 
a dozen times since his infatuation began he fancied him- 
self quite cured, and able to laugh at himself and look 
down upon her. And then some fresh aspect of the 
little creature would strike him into fresh ecstasies, 
and he would find himself as much under the spell as 
ever. 

Thus the first sight of her that evening in Mr. Corn- 
thwaite’s study had thrilled him less than the announce- 
ment of her name. But, on the other hand, the touch of 
her hand so unexpectedly accorded, had quickened his feel- 
ings into a delicious frenzy, which lasted during the whole 
of his walk down into the town and out to the one small 
backroom in a grimy little red brick house where he 
lodged. 

When Bram tried to think of Miss Biron soberly, to 
try to come to some sort of an estimate of her character, 
he was altogether at a loss. Her tears, her terrors, her 
smiles, her little airs, all seemed to succeed each other as 
rapidly as if she had been still a child. No emotion 
seemed to be able to endure in her volatile nature. He 
doubted, considering the matter in cold blood, whether 


32 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


this was a characteristic he admired; yet there it was> 
and his infatuation remained. 

With all her limitations, whatever they might be ; with 
all her faults, whatever they were, Miss Claire Biron had 
permanently taken her place in Bram’s narrow life as the 
nearest thing he had ever seen to an ideal woman, as the 
representative, for the time being at least, of that feminine 
creature, the necessity for whom he now began to under- 
stand, and who was to come straight into his heart and 
into his arms some day. 

For, with all his ambitions, his reasonable hopes. 
Brain was as yet too modest to say to himself that this 
white-handed lady herself, this pearl among pebbles, was 
the prize for which he must strive ; no, she only stood 
for that prize in his mind, in his heart, or so at least 
Bram told himself. 

Brain thought about Miss Biron and her bibulous papa 
all night, for he scarcely slept, but with the morning light 
came fresh cares to occupy his thoughts. 

It was his first day at his new employment in the 
office, and Bram, though he managed to hide all traces 
of what he felt under a stolid and matter-of-fact de- 
meanor, felt by no means at his ease on his first entrance 
among the young gentlemen in Mr. Cornthwaite’s office. 

He had put on his Sunday clothes, not without a pang 
at the extravagance in dress which his rise in life entailed. 
Nobody in the office seemed to have heard of his promo- 
tion, for the other clerks took no notice of him on his 
entrance, evidently supposing that he had been sent for, 
as was frequently the case, to take some message or to 
do some errand which required a trustworthy messenger. 

When, after being called into the inner office, he came 
out again and took his place at a desk among the rest 
there was a burst of astonishment, amusement, and 
some contempt at his expense. And when the truth 
became known that he had come among them to stay, he 
straight from the coalyard and the mill and the shed 
outside, the feelings of all the young gentlemen found 
vent in “ chaff ” of a particularly merciless kind. 


BEAM’S RISE IN LIFE. 


33 


His accent, his speech, his dress, his look, his walk, 
his manner, all formed themes for the very easiest ridicule. 
Never before had they had such an opportunity, and they 
made the most of it. But if they thought to make life 
in the office unbearable for Bram they had reckoned with- 
out their host. Bram cased himself in an armor of stolid 
good humor, joined in the laugh against himself, and 
in affecting to try to assume their modes of speech and 
manner contrived to burlesque them at least as well as 
they had mimicked him. 

And the end of it was that the fun languished all too 
soon for their wishes, and Bram when he left the office 
that afternoon, and wiped his face as he used to do after 
another sort of fiery ordeal, congratulated himself on 
having got through the day better than he had expected. 

Christian Cornthwaite ran out after him, and slapped 
him on the back. 

“ Well, Elshaw,” cried he, “ and how do you feel after 
it?” 

“ Much t’ same as Dan’l did when he’d come out of t’ 
den o’ lions, sir,” replied Bram grimly. “T’ young 
gentlemen in there,” and he pointed with his thumb over 
his shoulder, “ doan’t find me grand enough for ’em.” 

“ And so you want to go back to the works, Bram ? ” 

“No fear, sir,” answered the new clerk dryly. “ They’ll 
get used to me, or else maybe I shall get used to them. 
Or wi’ so many fine patterns round me maybe Ah shall 
be a polished gentleman myself presently.” 

“No doubt of it, Bram. But you’ve been rather 
roughly treated. It ought to have been managed grad- 
ually, bit by bit, and then at last, when you took your 
place in the office, I ought to have sent you to my own 
tailor first, and had you properly rigged out.” 

Bram looked down ruefully at his Sunday clothes. 

“ Ah felt a prince in these last evening,” he expostu- 
lated. 

Christian laughed heartily. 

“Well, they couldn’t beat you at the main things, 
Elshaw, at writing and spelling and calculating, eh?” 

3 


34 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ No,” answered Bram complacently. “ Ah could beat 
most of ’em there.” 

As a matter of fact, Bram’s self-teaching, with the 
additional help of the night school in the winter, had so 
developed his natural capacity that he was as far ahead 
of his new companions intellectually as he was behind 
them in externals. Christian, who knew this, felt proud 
of his protege. 

“There are some more hints I want to give you,” 
said he, as he put his arm through that of his rough 
companion and walked with him up the street, with 
the good-natured familiarity which made him popular 
with everybody, but in the exercise of which he was 
very discriminating. “You will have to leave William 
Henry Street, or wherever it is you hang out, and take 
a room in a better neighborhood. And I will show 
you where you can go and dine. Look here,” he went 
on, stopping abruptly, “ come up to me this evening, 
and we’ll have a talk over a pipe. You smoke, I sup- 
pose?” 

“ No, sir,” said Bram. “ Ah don’t smoke. It’s too ex- 
pensive. And Ah thank you kindly, but Ah’ve got a job 
out Hessel way this evening, and ” 

Christian interrupted him with sudden interest. 

“ Out Hessel way ? Why, that’s near Duke’s Farm. 
Will you take a note up for me to Miss Biron ? She lives 
there. You can find the house easy enough.” 

Bram, who had listened to these words with emotions 
he dared not express, agreed to take the note, but did not 
mention that it was to the farmhouse that his own errand 
took him. 

All the happiness he had felt over the anticipated walk 
to Hessel evaporated as he watched Christian tear a leaf 
out of a note-book, scribble hastily on it in pencil, fold and 
addressed it to “ Miss Claire Biron.” 

But what a poor fool he was to be jealous? Could 
there be a question but that Mr. Christian Cornthwaite, 
with his good looks and his gayety, his position and his 
fortune, would make her a splendid mate? 


BEAM’S RISE IN LIFE. 


35 


Something like this Bram carefully dinned into himself 
as he took the note, and went home to his tea. 

But for all that, he felt restless, dissatisfied, and un- 
happy as he set out after tea on his walk up to Hessel 
with that note from Christian Cornthwaite to Miss Biron 
in his pocket. 

Although it was a hot evening, and the walk was uphill 
all the way, Bram got to the farm by half-past six, and 
came up to the door just as a woman, whom he decided 
must he the servant, came out of it. 

She was about forty years of age, a little under the 
middle height, thickset of figure, and sallow of skin. But 
in her light gray eyes there was a shrewd but kindly 
twinkle ; there was a promise of humor about her mouth 
and her sharply-pointed nose which made the countenance 
a decidedly attractive one. 

She made no remark to Bram, but she turned and 
watched him as he approached the back door, and did not 
resume her walk until he had knocked and been admitted 
by Claire herself. 

Miss Biron seemed to feel some slight embarrassment 
at the sight of him, and received his explanation that he 
had come to repaint her door with an assumption of sur- 
prise. The shrewd young man decided that the young 
lady had repented her unconventional friendliness of the 
preceding evening, and was inclined to look upon his visit 
as an intrusion. His manner, therefore, was studiously 
distant and respectful as he raised his cap from his head, 
gave the reason for his coming, and then said that he had 
brought a note for her from Mr. Christian Cornthwaite. 

Claire blushed as she took it. Bram, who had brought 
his paint can and his brush, took off his coat, and began 
his task in silence, with just a sidelong look at the girl as 
she began to read the note. 

At that moment the inner door of the kitchen opened, 
and Mr. Biron entered with a jaunty step, arranging a rose- 
bud in his button-hole in quite a light comedy manner. 
Catching sight at once of Bram at work on the door, that 
young man observed that a slight frown crossed his face. 


36 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


After a momentary pause in his walk, he came on, how- 
ever, as gayly as ever, and peeping over his daughter’s 
shoulder read the few words the note contained, and said 
at once — 

“Well, you must go, dear; you must go.” 

Claire blushed hotly, and crumpled up the note. 

“ I — I don’t want to. I would rather not,” said she in a 
low voice. 

“ Oh, but that’s nonsense,” retorted he good-humoredly. 
“ Chris is a good fellow, a capital fellow. Put on your 
hat, and don’t be a goose. I’ll see that the young man at 
the door has his beer.” 

Bram heard this, and his face tingled, but he said noth- 
ing. He perceived, indeed, from a certain somewhat femi- 
nine spitefulness in Mr. Biron’s tone, that the words were 
said with the intention of annoying him. 

Claire appeared to hesitate a moment, then quickly 
making up her mind she said — “ All right, father. I’ll go,” 
and disappeared through the inner door. 

Theodore, without any remark to Bram, followed her. 

In a few moments Bram heard a movement in the 
straw of the farmyard behind him, and looking round 
saw that Claire was standing behind him with her hat 
and gloves on, and was apparently debating in her own 
mind whether she would utter something which was in 
her thoughts. He saluted her respectfully with a stolid 
face. Then she began to speak, reddened, stammered, 
and finally made a dash for it. 

“ Where do you live ? ” she asked suddenly. “ I mean 
— is it far from here ? ” 

“Ho, miss; it’s over yon,” answered Bram menda- 
ciously, nodding in the direction of the cottages on the 
brow of the hill. 

“ Then would you very much mind ” and Bram 

could see that her breast was heaving under the influence 
of some strong emotion, “keeping your eye upon this 
place until I come back? You know all about it,” she 
went on, with a burst of uneasy confldence, “ so that it’s 
no use my minding that. And when my father’s left 


BEAM’S RISE IN LIFE. 


37 


alone — well, well, you know,” said she, blushing crimson, 
and keeping her eyes down. “And Joan has to go home 
to her husband and children at night. And— and I’m 
afraid when he gets excited, you know, that he’ll set the 
place on fire. He nearly did last night. You see, my 
poor father has a great many worries, and a very little 
affects his head — since that sabre cut in India.” 

The humility, nay, the humiliation in her tone, touched 
Bram to the quick. He promised at once that he would 
take care that Mr. Biron did no harm either to himself 
or to the house while she was away, and received her 
grateful, breathless, little whisper of “Thank you; oh, 
thank you,” with outward stolidity, but with considerable 
emotion. 

Then she ran off, and he went quietly on with his 
work. 

It took him a very short time to finish putting on the 
one coat of paint, which was all he could do that night ; 
and then, as Mr. Biron had not appeared again, Bram 
thought he had better take a look round and see what 
that gentleman was doing. So he took up his paint-can, 
and, leaving the door open to dry, made his way round 
to the front of the house, and peeped cautiously in at the 
lower windows ; and in one of them he saw a couple of 
empty champagne bottles, with the corks lying beside 
them, and an overturned glass on the table. 

“T’owd rascal hasn’t wasted much time,” thought 
Bram to himself, as he stared at the evidences of Mr. 
Biron’s solitary dissipation, and looked about for the 
toper himself. But Theodore was not in the room. 
Neither was he in the room on the other side of the front 
door, as Bram hastened to ascertain. Perhaps he had 
had sense enough to make his way upstairs to his own 
room to sleep off the effects of the wine. 

This seeming to be a probable explanation of his disap- 
pearance, Bram was inclined to trouble himself no further 
on that head, when a faint noise, which seemed to proceed 
from the bowels of the earth, attracted his attention. 
There was a grating under the window of the room which 


38 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


appeared to be the dining-room, and in the cellar which 
was thus dimly lighted some one appeared to be moving 
about. 

Bram, in his character of sworn guardian of the house, 
thought it best to investigate, so he ran round to the 
back, entered by the open door, and found a trap-door in 
the hall just outside the kitchen door. 

A strong smell of paraffin was the first thing he noticed 
as he looked down the ladder ; the next was the sight of 
Mr. Biron calmly emptying a can of the oil upon the loose 
straw and firewood which the cellar contained. 

Startled by the sudden light and noise above, Mr. Biron 
dropped the can as the trap-door opened, and then Bram 
saw that in his left hand he held a box of matches. 

“ Tha fool, tha drunken fool, coom up wi’ ye ! ” shouted 
Elshaw, as he stretched down a strong arm and pulled 
Theodore up by his coat collar. 

Bram had expected his captive to stagger, and so he 
did. He had expected him to stammer and to stare ; and 
he did these things also. But Bram had seen a good 
deal of drunkenness in his time, and he was not easy to 
deceive. 

Suddenly holding the slender little man atarm^s length 
from him, and looking steadily into his eyes with a black 
frown on his own face, he shouted in a voice which might 
have roused the village — 

“ Why, you d d old rascal, what villainy have you 

been up to ? You’re as sober as I am ! ” 


CHAPTER VI. 

ME. BIEON’s condescension. 

When Mr. Theodore Biron found himself pulled up 
the steps of his cellar, and roughly shaken by the very 
person who had disarmed him on the previous evening, 
his rage was such that he lost his usual airy self-posses- 


MR. BIRON’S CONDESCENSION. 39 

sion completely, and betrayed himself in the most un- 
worthy manner. 

“ Who are you, sir? And how dare you interfere with 
me in this way ? ” stammered he, as he tried in vain to 
release himself from the determined grasp of the young 
clerk. 

“ Coom up to t’ light, and then you’ll see who Ah am,” 
said Bram, as with a strong arm he dragged the little 
man up the steps, and, shutting the trap-door> folded his 
arms and turned to look at him. 

“ Do you dare to justify this outrage, this — this bur- 
glarious entry upon my premises? The second in two 
days ? Do you dare to justify it ? ” said Theodore 
haughtily. 

“ Ay,” said Bram surlily, “ Ah’m going to give informa- 
tion to t’ police. Ah’m goin’ to tell them to keep an eye 
upon you, Mr. Biron, and not to be surprised if t’ house 
is burnt down; since you’ve got odd ways of amusing 
yourself with matches and paraffin, and with candles left 
ablaze near light curtains. Ah suppose you’re insured, 
Mr. Biron ?” 

“ Whatever you suppose has nothing to do with the 
question,” retorted Mr. Biron, whose little thin cheeks 
were pink with indignation, and whose light eyes were 
flashing with annoyance and malignity. “Nobody is 
likely to pay much attention to the statements of a man 
who is evidently a loafer and a thief.” 

“A thief!” shouted Bram with a menacing gesture, 
which had the effect of sending Theodore promptly into 
the little dining-room behind him. “Well, we’ll see 
whether t’ word of t’ thief won’t be taken against yours, 
Mr. Biron.” 

There was a pause. Theodore from behind the table 
in the little dining-room, where he was twirling his 
moustache with a trembling white hand, looked at 
him with apprehension, and presently laughed in an 
attempt to recover his usual light-hearted ease of 
manner. 

“Come, come,” said he, “this is carrying a joke too 


40 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


far, for I suppose it was intended for a joke — this intru- 
sion upon my premises — and that you never had any real 
thought of carrying anything away. 1 remember your 
face now; you are one of the workmen at my cousin’s 
place, Cornthwaite’s Iron- Works.” 

Bram, who was not unwilling to make terms with Miss 
Biron’s father, stared at him sullenly. 

“ Ah’m not one of t’ workmen now. Ah’m in t’ office,” 
said he. 

Mr. Biron raised his eyebrows ; he did not seem 
pleased. It had in fact occurred to him that this young 
man was employed as a sort of spy by the Cornthwaites, 
with whom he himself was by no means an acceptable 
person. 

He smiled disagreeably. 

“ One of the clerks, eh ? One of the smart young men 
who nibble pens in the office ? ” 

“ Ay, but ma smartness isn’t outside, Mr. Biron.” 

“I see. Great genius — disdains mere appearance and 
all that.” 

Bram said nothing. Theodore’s sneers hurt him more 
than any he had ever been subjected to before. He felt, 
in spite of his contempt for the airy-mannered scoundrel, 
that he himself stood at a disadvantage, with his rough 
speech and awkward movements, with the dapper little 
man in front of him. The consciousness that he himself 
would be reckoned of no account compared to Theodore 
Biron by the very men who despised the latter and 
respected himself was the strongest spur he had ever 
felt towards self-improvement. 

“ And what brings a person of your intellectual calibre 
into our humble neighborhood?” pursued Theodore in 
the same tone. 

“ Ah’m looking for lodgings up this way,” answered 
Bram shortly. 

The idea had come to him that evening that, since he 
had been told to change his lodgings, he would settle in 
the neighborhood of Hessel. 

As he had expected, Mr. Biron did not look pleased. 


MR. BIRON’S CONDESCENSION. 


41 


“And you are making yourself at home in advance !” 
suggested he dryly. 

“ Well, sir, you needn’t see more of me than you feel 
inclined to,” retorted Bram. 

And, with a curt salutation, he turned on his heel and 
went out of the house by the back way, through the 
kitchen and the still open outer door. 

He went up the hill towards the row of cottages on 
the summit, and made inquiries which resulted in his 
finding the two modest rooms he wanted in the end house 
of all, within a stone’s throw of a ruin so strange-looking 
that Bram made a tour of inspection of the ramshackle 
old building before returning to the town. 

This ruin had once been a country mansion of fair size 
and of some importance, but the traces of its architectural 
beauties were now few and far apart. Of the main build- 
ing only one side wall retained enough of it sold charac- 
teristics to claim attention; at the top of the massive 
stonework a Tudor chimney, of handsome proportions, 
rose in incongruous stateliness above the decaying roof 
which had been placed over a row of cottages, which, 
built up within the old wall, had grown ruinous in their 
turn, and were now shut up and deserted. 

At the back of this heterogeneous pile and a little dis- 
tance away from it, another long and massive stone wall, 
with a Tudor window out of which once Wolsey had 
looked, had now become the chief prop and mainstay of 
another row of buildings, one of which was a school, 
another a chapel, while a third was a now disused stable. 

And in the shelter of these ruins and remains of great- 
ness a tall chimney, a cluster of sheds, and a pile of grass- 
grown trucks marked the spot where a now disused 
coal mine added a touch of fantastic desolation to the 
scene. 

Bram went all round the pit-mouth and surveyed the 
town of Shefiield, with its dead yellow lights and its 
patches of blackness, like an inky sea bearing a fieet of 
ill-lighted boats on its breast in a Stygian mist. He 
thought he should like this evening walk out of the 


42 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


smoke and the lick of the fiery tongues, even without the 
occasional peeps he should get at Miss Biron. 

But he hardly knew, perhaps, how much the thought of 
her, of her dancing eyes, her rapid movements like the 
sweep of a bird’s wing, had to do with his feeling. 

He went back round the pit’s mouth, making his way 
with some difficulty in the darkness over the rough stones 
with which the place was thickly strewn. 

And as he came to the remains of the old mansion he 
heard the laugh of Christian Cornthwaite, a little subdued, 
but clearly recognizable, not very far from his ears. 

Bram straightened himself with a nasty shock. By 
the direction from which the sound came, he knew that 
Christian was in the ruin itself; and that he was not 
there by himself was plain. Who then was with him ? 
Bram did not want to find an answer to this question ; 
at least he told himself that he did not. The dilapidated 
shell of the old mansion was not the place where a lady 
would meet her lover. Bram had peeped into one of the 
deserted cottages on his way to the pit’s mouth, and had 
seen that, boarded up as doors and windows were, there 
were ruinous crannies and spaces through which a tramp 
or vagrant could creep to a precarious shelter. 

Christian, who loved an adventure, amorous or other- 
wise, was evidently pursuing one now. 

Bram walked down the hill, passed the cottage where 
he had engaged his new rooms, whistling to himself, and 
telling himself persistently that he was not wondering 
where Miss Biron had gone to that evening. And then 
he became suddenly mute, for, turning his head at the 
sound of a light footstep behind him, he saw Claire her- 
self coming down the hill at a breathless rate. 

She passed him without seeing him. Her head was 
bent low, and her feet seemed to fiy. Bram’s heart 
seemed to stop beating as he watched her. 

But he would not allow that he suspected her of being 
the person who had been in the ruined building with 
Christian Cornthwaite. It was true that Christian had 
sent her a note in which he had evidently asked her to 


MR. BIRON’S CONDESCENSION. 


43 


meet him ; it was true that she had acceded to the request, 
at her father’s instigation. 

But although Bram clenched his teeth in thinking of 
Theodore, and felt a sudden impulse of fierce indignation 
against that gentleman, he would not acknowledge to 
himself that it was possible to connect her with an act 
inconsistent with the modesty of a gentlewoman. 

He was not far behind when Theodore, lively, bright, 
and entirely recovered from the discomposure into which 
Bram’s unseemly violence had thrown him, came forth 
from the farmyard to meet his daughter. 

“ My dear child, I was getting quite anxious about you. 
Where’s Chris ? I thought he would have seen you back 
home.” 

“ I left him — at the top of the hill, papa,” answered 
Claire in a demure voice. 

And she ran past Theodore into the house. 

Then Theodore, whose eyes were sharp, recognized 
Bram. And there fiashed through his brain, always active 
on his own behalf, the suspicion that this presumptuous 
young man might be spying not so much on his employer’s 
account, as upon his own. The idea struck Theodore as 
preposterously amusing ; but at the same time he thought 
that something might be made out of the foolish fellow’s 
infatuation, if it indeed existed. 

“Well, and how about the lodgings?” said he with 
cheerful condescension, as Bram came nearer. 

“ Ah’ve found some,” replied Bram shortly. 

“And what brings you so far afield?” went on Theo- 
dore more urbanely than ever. “May I hazard the con- 
jecture that there’s a lady in the case ? ” 

The young man was quick to seize this suggestion, 
which he saw might be used most usefully hereafter. 

“ Ay, sir, that’s about reght,” said he. “ But she doan’t 
live here,” he went on, making up his story with great 
deliberation as he spoke. “ She lives miles away in t’ 
country ; but Ah thought Ah’d better settle out of t’ town 
myself, before Ah went courting.” 

Theodore was disappointed, but he did not show it. 


44 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ Well,” said he, “ we shall see something of you now 
and then, I daresay.” 

And he nodded good-bye in the most affable manner. 

Bram saluted respectfully, but he was too shrewd to 
be much impressed, in the manner Theodore intended, by 
this change towards him. 

Away from the glamour cast upon him by the fact of 
Claire’s presence in his vicinity, Bram had sense enough 
to reflect that the less he saw of Miss Biron and her shifty 
father the better it would be for him. He did not say 
this to himself in so many words ; but the knowledge was 
borne strongly in upon him all the same. There were 
forces in those two persons, differently as he esteemed 
them, against which he felt that he had no defence ready. 
Theodore was cunning and grasping ; his daughter was, 
as Bram knew, used by her father as a tool in his unscru- 
pulous hands. Deep as Bram’s compassion for the charm- 
ing girl was, and his admiration, he had the strength of 
mind to live for months in her neighborhood without 
making any attempt to speak to her. 

He saw her, indeed, morning after morning, and even- 
ing after evening, on his way down to the works and on 
his way back. For the road from his lodgings lay past 
the farm, where Miss Biron was always busy with her 
poultry in the morning, and working in her garden at 
night. 

It was not often that she saw Bram, but when she did 
she had always a smile and a nod for him ; never more 
than that though, even when he lingered a little, in the 
hope that she would throw him a word. 

Bram saw Theodore sometimes, lounging in a garden 
chair, with a cigarette in his mouth ; and sometimes Chris 
Cornthwaite would be with him, or walking by Claire’s 
side round the lawn, chattering to her while she pottered 
about her late autumn flowers. 

This sight always sent a sharp pang through Bram’s 
heart; for he had conceived the idea that Christian, nice 
fellow though he was, might be too volatile a person to 
value Claire’s affection as she deserved. 


MR. BIRON’S CONDESCENSION. 


45 


Claire, on her side, seemed to be happy enough with 
Christian. Her pretty laugh rang out gayly ; and Bram, 
even while he laughed at himself for a sentimental folly, 
found himself praying that the poor child might not be 
deceived in her hopes of happiness with her volatile 
lover. 

For Christian, amiable and devoted as he might be with 
Claire, had not, as Bram knew, given up his amiability 
and devotion to other girls ; and after the second or third 
time that Bram had seen him at Hessel Farm, he mentioned 
casually to the newly promoted clerk that he did not 
want his father to hear of his visits there. 

Whereat Bram looked grave, and foresaw trouble in 
the near future. 

The March winds had begun to blow fiercely on the 
high ground above Hessel, when Theodore Biron at last 
discovered a use to which to put his young neighbor. 
Would Bram do some marketing for him in the town ? 
Bram was rather surprised at the request, for an excuse 
for going into the town was what Theodore liked to have. 
But when he found that the task he was expected to 
undertake was the purchase of one pound’s worth of 
goods for the sum of five shillings, which was all the 
cash Theodore trusted him with, Bram, when Theodore 
had turned his back upon him, stood looking thoughtfully 
at the two half-crowns in his hand. 

And while he was doing so Claire, who had seen the 
transaction from the window, ran out of the house and 
came up with him. As usual, the girl’s presence threw a 
spell upon him, and put to flight all the saner ideas he had 
conceived as to the desirability of trying to conquer his 
own infatuation. She came up smiling, but there was 
anxiety in her face. 

“What has papa been saying to you?” she asked 
imperiously. 

“ He wants me to get some things for him in the town,” 
said Bram straightforwardly. “But Ah’m such a bad 
hand at marketing— that— that Ah’m afraid ” 

Claire blushed, and interrupted him impatiently. 


46 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ He’s not given you money enough, of course. He 
never does. He doesn’t understand. Men never do. 
They think everything can be got for a few pence for the 
housekeeping, and that one is wasteful and extravagant. 
Give me the money ; I’ll see about the things.” 

“ No, you won’t. Miss Claire,” said Bram composedly, 
as he put the two half-crowns in his pocket. “ You’ve 
put me on my mettle. Ah’m going to see what Ah can 
do, and show you that the men can give the ladies a 
lesson in marketing, after all.” 

But Claire did not reply in the same light tone. She 
looked up in his face with an expression of shame and 
alarm in her eyes, which touched him keenly. With a 
little catch in her breath, she tried to protest, to forbid. 
Then she read something in Bram’s eyes which stung her, 
some gleam of pity, of comprehension. She broke off 
short, burst into tears, and turned abruptly away. 

Bram stood by the gate for a few seconds, with his head 
hung down, and a guilty, miserable look on his face. 
Then, as nobody came out to him, he slunk quietly away. 


CHAPTER VII. 
beam’s dismissal. 

It was with some diffidence that Bram presented him- 
self at the farmhouse door that evening. He went through 
the farmyard to the back door, and gave a modest knock. 
It was Joan, the servant, who opened the door to him, 
and Bram, as his own eyes met those of the middle-aged 
Yorkshire woman, had a strong sense that she read 
him, as he would have expressed it, “ like a book.” In- 
deed Joan could read character in a face much more easily 
than she could read a printed page. Having been born 
long before the days of School Boards, she had been ac- 
customed from her early youth to find her entertainment 
not in cheap fiction, but in the life around her ; so that 


BRAM’S DISMISSAL. 


47 


she was on the whole much better educated than women 
of her class are now, having stored her mind with the 
facts gained by experience and observation. 

She looked at him not unkindly. 

“ Ah,” she began, with a nod of recognition, as if she 
had known him well for a year instead of now speaking 
to him for the first time, Ah thowt it was you. Mister 
Christian he comes in by t’ front door.” 

Bram did not like this comparison. It suggested, in 
the first place, that Joan had an instinct that there was 
some sort of rivalry between himself and Mr. Christian. 
It suggested also the basis on which they respectively 
stood. 

“ I’ve brought some things Miss Biron wanted,” he be- 
gan, forgetting that he had been commissioned, not by the 
young lady, but by her father. 

Joan smiled a broad smile of shrewd amusement. 
Bram wished she would mind her own business. 

“Weel, here she be to see them hersen,” said she, as 
the inner door of the kitchen opened, and Claire came in. 

“ Oh, Joan, papa wants you to ” began she. 

Then she saw Bram, and stopped. 

“ I’ve brought the things, Miss Claire,” said he in a shy 
voice. 

Miss Biron had stopped short and changed color. She 
now came forward slowly, and passing Joan, held open 
the door for him to enter. 

“ Oh, please come in,” she said in a very demure voice, 
from which it was impossible to tell whether she was 
pleased or annoyed, grateful or the reverse, for his good 
offices. 

Bram entered, and proceeded to place his enormous 
parcel on the deal table, and to cut the string. He was 
passing through the refining process very rapidly ; and, 
already, in the clothes which he had chosen under Chris 
Cornthwaite’s eye, he looked too dignified a person to en- 
gage in the duties of a light porter. 

Claire, more demure than ever, spoke as if she was 
much shocked. 


48 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ Oh, have you carried that heavy parcel ? Oh, I’m so 
sorry. It is very, very kind of you, but ” 

She stopped, stammering a little. Joan, who was 
standing with her hands on her hips, admiring the scene, 
laughed scornfully. 

“ Eh, but it’s a grand thing to be yoong ! Ah can’t get 
no smart yoong gen’lemen to carry my parcels for me, 
not if they was to see me breakin’ ma back.” 

“ Why, you’ve got a husband to carry them for you,” 
said Claire quickly, and not very happily ; for Joan 
laughed again. 

“ Ay, Miss Claire, but they doan’t do it after they’re 
married ; so do you make t’ moast o’ your time.” 

And Joan, with an easy nod which was meant to in- 
clude both the young people, went through into the hall 
with leisurely steps. 

As she had left behind her a slight feeling of awkward 
reserve, Claire felt bound to begin with an apology for 
her. 

“ She’s rather rough, but, oh, so good,” said she. 

“ Then if she’s good to you, I can forgive all her rough- 
ness,” said Brain. 

And the next minute he wished he had not said it. 

There was a momentary pause, during which Bram 
busied himself with the strings of his parcels. With a 
rapid eye. Miss Biron ran over the various things which 
the outer wrapper had contained. Then, with a bright 
flush in her face, she took her purse from her pocket. 

“ How much do I owe you ? ” she asked quickly. 
“Three boxes of candles, eighteenpence. Two boxes 
of sardines, two and sixpence. Box of figs, half-a-crown 


Bran interrupted her hotly. “ One and ninepence, the 
figs,” cried he, “ and the sardines were only ninepence a 
tin.” 

“ Then they are not the best.” 

“Yes, they are.” 

This colloquy, short and simple as it was, had left the 
combatants, for such they seemed, panting with excite- 


BEAM’S DISMISSAL. 


49 


ment. Miss Biron looked at the young man narrowly 
and proceeded in a tone of much haughtiness 

“ I must beg you to tell me really what they cost, 
whatever my father said. He knows nothing about the 
price of things, but”— and the young lady gave him 
a look which was meant to impress him with her vast 
experience in these matters — “I do.” 

Brain, afraid of offending her still further, and con- 
scious of the delicate ground upon which he stood, began 
submissively to add up the various items, deducting a 
few pence where he dared, until the total of nineteen 
shillings and fourpence was reached. Miss Biron opened 
her purse rather nervously, and took out a small handful 
of silver, a very small handful, alas ! 

“ Let me see. Papa gave you five shillings ” 

“ And then the ten he gave me as I went out by the 
gate after you’d gone up,” pursued Bram, imperturb- 
ably. 

“ Ten ! ” echoed Claire, sharply. “ Papa gave you ten 
shillings more ! ” 

“ Half-a-sovereign, yes,” replied Bram, mendaciously. 
“You said he hadn’t given me enough, you know, so 
he gave me the ten shillings. You ask him.” 

Claire shook her head. 

“ It’s no use asking papa anything,” she said with a 
sigh. Then she added, suddenly raising her head and 
hashing her eyes, “I must trust to your honor, Mr. 
Elshaw.” 

The sound of his name uttered by her lips gave Bram 
a ridiculous thrill of pleasure. He had supposed she 
only knew him as “ Bram,” and the thought that she had 
taken the trouble to inquire his name was a delicious 
one. 

“Yes,” said he simply, in no wise troubled by the 
doubt she expressed. “Well, that’s fifteen shillings, 
and you owe me four shillings and fourpence.” 

She gave him a quick glance of suspicion, and then 
counted out her poor little hoard of sixpences and cop- 
pers. She had only three shillings and sevenpence. 

4 


50 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ I owe you,” said she, as she put the money into his 
hand, “ninepence, which I must pay you next week. 
But, please, I want you to promise,” she earnestly went 
on, “ not to do any more shopping for papa. He is so 
extravagant,” and she tried to laugh merrily, “ that I 
have to keep some check upon him, or we should soon 
be ruined.” 

“All right, Miss Claire, I’ll do just as you wish, of 
course. But it’s a great pleasure to me to be able to do 
any little thing for you. You know, for one thing,” he 
added quickly, fancying that she might think this pre- 
sumptuous, “that Mr. Christian was the person who got 
me moved up out of the works, so I am doubly glad to 
do anything for — for anybody he takes an interest in.” 

Over Claire’s sensitive face there passed a shadow at 
the mention of Christian’s name. 

“Christian Cornthwaite is my cousin, you know,” said 
she. “ He often talks of you. He says you are very 
clever, and he is very proud of having discovered you, ns 
he calls it.” 

“ It was very good of him,” said Brara. “ I’m afraid I 
don’t do him much credit ; I’m such a rough sort of chap.” 

Miss Biron looked at him rather shyly, and laughed. 

“Well, you were, just a little. But you are — are ” 

“ A little bit better now ? ” suggested Bram modestly. 

“Well, I was going to say a great deal better, only I 
was afraid it sounded rather rude. What I meant was 
that — that ” 

“Well, I should like to hear what it was you meant.” 

“ Well, that you speak differently, for one thing.” 

“ But I slip back sometimes,” said Bram, laughing and 
blushing, just as she laughed and blushed. “ It’s so hard 
not to say ‘ Ah ’ when I ought to say ‘ I.’ I’m getting on, 
I know, but it’s like walking on eggs all the time.” 

Then they both laughed again, and at this point the 
door opened and Mr. Biron came in. 

He was very amiable, and insisted on Bram’s coming 
into the dining-room with him. As Bram neither smoked 
nor drank, however, Theodore’s offer of whisky and cigars 


BEAM’S DISMISSAL. 


51 


was thrown away. But Bram sat down and made a 
very good audience, laughing at his host’s stories and 
jokes, so that he found himself forced into accepting an 
invitation to come in again on the following evening. 

By Theodore’s wish it became Brain’s frequent custom 
to spend an hour at the farmhouse in the evening ; and the 
young man soon availed himself of the intimacy thus be- 
gun to make himself useful to Claire in a hundred ways. 
He would chop wood in the yard, mend broken furniture, 
fetch things from the town, and bargain for her for her 
poultry, suggest and help to carry out reformations in her 
management of the dairy — doing everything unobtru- 
sively, but making his shrewd common sense manifest in 
a hundred practical ways. 

And Claire was grateful, rather shy of taking advan- 
tage of his kindness, but giving him such reward of smiles 
and thanks as more than repaid him for labor which was 
pleasure indeed. 

Sometimes Christian Cornthwaite would be at the farm, 
and on these occasions Bram saw little of Claire, who was 
always monopolized by her cousin. Christian was as 
devoted as Bram could have wished; but, if Theodore 
thought that the young man delayed his coming, he did 
not scruple to send his daughter on some excuse to call 
at Holme Park, always refusing Bram’s humble offers to 
take the message or to escort Claire. 

The one thing Bram could have wished about Claire was 
that she should be less submissive to her unscrupulous 
father in matters like this. He would have had her re- 
fuse to go up to Holme Park, where she was always re- 
ceived, as Bram knew, with the coldness which ought to 
have been reserved for Theodore. And especially did 
Bram feel this now that he knew, from Theodore’s own 
lips, that the notes he sent by his daughter’s hand to 
Josiah Cornthwaite were seldom answered. It made 
Bram’s blood boil to know this, and that in the face of 
this fact Theodore continued to send his daughter up to 
his rich cousin’s house on begging errands. 

Bram was in the big farm kitchen by himself one cool 


52 


FOEGE AND FURNACE. 


September evening, busily engaged in making a new 
dressing-table for Claire out of some old boxes. He had 
his coat off, and was sawing away, humming to himself 
as he did so, when, turning to look for something he 
wanted, he found, to his surprise, that Claire, whom he 
had not seen that evening, was sitting in the room. 

She had taken her hat off, and was sitting with it in 
her lap, so silently, so sadly, that Brain, who was not 
used to this mood in the volatile girl, was struck with 
astonishment. 

For a moment he stood, saw in hand, looking at her 
without speaking. 

“ Miss Claire ! ” exclaimed he at last. 

« Well?” 

“ When did you come in ? I never saw you come in ! ” 

“No. I didn’t want you to see me. I don’t want any 
one to see me. So I can’t go in because papa has the 
door open, and he would catch me on the way upstairs.” 

“ What’s wrong with you. Miss Claire ? ” 

Bram had come over to her and was leaning on the 
table and speaking with so much kindness in his voice 
that the girl’s eyes, after glancing up quickly and meeting 
his, filled with tears. 

“ Oh, everything. One feels like that sometimes. 
Everybody does, I suppose.” 

Brain’s heart ached for the girl. He guessed that she 
had been to Holme Park on the usual errand, and that 
she had been coldly received. He could hear Theodore 
strumming on the piano in the drawing-room. The piano 
was so placed that the player had a good view of the open 
door, and Bram knew that Theodore had chosen this 
method of filling up the time till his daughter’s return. 
Apparently he had now caught with his sharp ears the 
sound of voices in the kitchen, for the playing ceased, 
and a moment later he presented himself at the door with 
a smiling face. 

“ Good-evening, Elshaw. Heard you sawing away, but 
didn’t like to disturb you till I heard another voice, and 
guessed that I might. Any answer to my note, Claire ? ” 



For a moment he stood, saw in hand, looking at her without speaking. 

— Page 52, 




BEAM’S DISMISSAL. 


53 


“ No, papa.” 

Claire had risen from her chair, and was standing with 
her back turned to her father, pretending to be busy stick- 
ing the long, black-headed pins into her hat. 

“No answer. Oh, well, there was hardly an answer 
needed. That’s all right.” 

From his tone nobody would have guessed that Theo- 
dore cared more than his words implied ; but Bram, who 
saw most things, noticed a frown of disappointment and 
anger on the airy Mr. Biron’s face. After a pause Theo- 
dore said — 

“I think I shall go down the hill and have a game of 
billiards. That will fill up the time till you’ve finished 
your carpentering, Elshaw, and then we’ll finish up with 
a game of chess.” 

And Theodore disappeared. A few moments later they 
heard him shut himself out by the front door. 

Bram after a glance at Claire went on with his sawing, 
judging it wiser not to attempt to offer the sympathy with 
which his heart was bursting. 

When he had been going on with his work for some 
minutes, however, Claire came and stood silently beside 
him. He looked up and smiled. 

“ Go on with your work,” said she gravely, “just fora 
few minutes. Then I’m going to send you away.” 

“ Send me away. Miss Claire ? What for ? ’’ 

“ For your own good, Mr. Elshaw.” 

Bram suddenly pulled himself upright, and then looked 
down at her in dismay. 

“ Mr. Elshaw ! I’m getting on in the world then ! I used 
to be only Bram.” 

“ That’s it,” said Claire in a low voice, looking at the 
fire. “ You used to be only Bram ; but you’ve got beyond 
that now.” 

“ But I don’t want to get beyond that with you, Miss 
Claire,” protested he. 

“ What you want doesn’t matter,” said she decidedly. 
“ You can’t help yoarself. I’ve heard something about 
you to-night. Oh, don’t look like that; it was nothing to 


54 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


your discredit, nothing at all. But you’ve got to give up 
your carpentering and wood chopping for us, Bram, and 
you’re not to come here again.” She spoke with much 
decision, but her sensitive face showed some strange con- 
flict going on within her, in which some of the softer emo- 
tions were evidently engaged. Whatever it was that 
made her turn her humble and useful old friend away, 
the cause was not ingratitude. 

Before he could put another question, being indeed too 
much moved to be able to frame one speedily, Bram was 
startled by a tapping at the door. Miss Biron started ; 
Bram almost thought he saw her shiver. She pointed 
quickly to the inner door. 

“ Go at once,” said she in an imperious whisper, “ and 
remember you are not to come back ; you are never to 
come back.” 

Bram took up his coat, slipped his arms into it, and 
obeyed without a word. But the look on his face, as 
Claire caught a glimpse of it, was one which cut her to 
the quick. She drew a deep breath, and threw out her 
hands towards him with a piteous cry. Bram stopped, 
shivered, made one step towards her, when the tap at the 
door was repeated more sharply. 

Claire recovered herself at once, made a gesture to him 
to go, and opened the one door as he let himself out by 
the other. 

Bram heard the voice of the newcomer. It was Chris- 
tian Cornthwaite. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

ANOTHER STEP UPWARD. 

Bram left the farmhouse in a tumult of feeling. Why 
had he been dismissed so abruptly ? Why had he been 
dismissed at all ? 

It was on Christian’s account apparently. But what 
objection could Christian have to his visits to the farm ? 


ANOTHER STEP UPWARD. 


55 


Ou the many occasions when the two young men had 
met there Bram had always been shunted into the back- 
ground for Christian, and had been left at his modest 
occupations unheeded, while Claire gave all her attention 
to her cousin. Bram had looked upon this arrangement 
as quite natural, and had never so much as winced at it. 
The idea that Christian Cornthwaite might look upon 
him as a possible rival being out of the question, again 
Bram asked himself — What could be the reason of his 
dismissal ? 

He did not mean to take it quietly; he had conceit 
enough to think that Claire would be sorry if he did. 
He could flatter himself honestly that during the past six 
months he had become the young lady’s trusted friend, 
never obtrusive, never demonstrative, hut trusted, per- 
haps appreciated, none the less on that account. 

Bram had the excuse of Theodore’s invitation for hang- 
ing about the neighborhood until that gentleman’s re- 
turn. But at the very moment when Mr. Biron’s gay 
voice, humming to himself as he came up the hill, struck 
upon Bram’s ear, Christian Cornthwaite came out through 
the farmyard gate. 

“ Hallo, Elshaw, is that you ? ” he asked, as he came 
out and passed his arm through Bram’s. “ I wondered 
what had become of you when I did not And you in the 
house this evening. I’d begun to look upon you as one 
of the flxtures.” 

“ I was there this evening, Mr. Christian,” replied Bram 
soberly. “ But I got turned out without much ceremony 
just before you came.” 

“ Turned out, eh ? I didn’t think you ever did any- 
thing to deserve such treatment from any one.” And 
Chris looked curious. “You are what I call a model 
young man, if anything a little too much like the hero of 
a religious story for young ladies, written by a young 
lady.” 

Bram was quite acute enough to understand that this 
was a sneer. 

“ You mean that I’m what you and your friends call ei 


56 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


prig, Mr. Christian ? ” he said quite unaffectedly, and 
without any sign of shame or regret. “Well, I suppose 
I am. But you don’t allow for the difference between us 
at starting. To get up to where you stand from where I 
used to be, one must be a bit of a prig, don’t you think ? ” 

“ Perhaps so. I think you may be trusted to know your 
own business, Elshaw. You’re one of the men that get 
on. It won’t do you any harm on the way up if you 
leave off chopping firewood in your shirt-sleeves for people 
who don’t think any the better of you for it.” 

Bram, who had let himself be led up the hill, stopped 
short. 

“ She doesn’t think any the worse of me for doing any 
little thing 1 can to help her,” said he in a muffled voice. 

Christian began to laugh. 

“She? You mean Claire. Oh, no, no, she does justice 
to everybody, bless her dear little heart ! I was thinking 
of our rascally friend, her father. You know very well 
that he uses his daughter as a means for getting all he 
can out of everybody. I hope you’ve not been had by the 
old rufflan, Elshaw ? ” 

“ No, Mr. Christian ; no, I haven’t,” answered Bram 
hastily. “ That is, not to an extent that matters. ” 

“ Ah, ha ! That means you have been had for half- 
crowns, for instance ? ” As Bram moved uneasily, Chris 
laughed again. “ Of course, it is no affair of mine ; I’m 
quite sure you can see through our frivolous friend as 
well as anybody else. But if, as you say, you have been 
dismissed, why, I advise you not to try to get reinstated.” 

Now, this advice troubled Bram exceedingly. It was 
excellent of its kind, no doubt; but he asked himself 
whether the man who was so keenly alive to the disad- 
vantages of even an acquaintance with the Birons could 
really be ready to form an alliance which must bring the 
burden of the needy elderly gentleman upon him for life. 
His feelings upon the subject were so keen that they would 
not permit him to temporize and to choose his words and his 
opportunity. Quite suddenly he blurted out — 

“You’re going to marry Miss Claire, aren’t you?” 


ANOTHER STEP UPWARD. 


57 


Christian, who always took things more easily than 
his deeper-natured companion, looked at the earnest, 
strongly-cut face with something like amusement. Luck- 
ily, it was too dark for Brain to see the full significance 
of his companion’s expression. 

“Marry her? Why, yes, to be sure I hope so. My 
father is very anxious for me ‘ to settle down,’ as he calls 
it, though I would rather, for my own part, not settle 
down quite so far as matrimony just yet.” 

There was a pause. Then Bram said in a dry voice — 

“I can’t understand you, Mr. Christian. You seem 
just as nigh what a man ought to be as a man can be in 
lots of ways. And I can’t understand how a man like 
that, that is a man like you, shouldn’t be all on fire to 
make the girl he loves his wife as quick as he can. Is 
that a part of my priggishness, Mr. Christian, to wonder 
at that ? ” 

Christian did not answer at once. They had reached 
the top of the hill, and were standing by the ruined 
cottages, which looked more desolate than ever in the 
darkness of the winter evening. The wind whistled 
through the broken walls and the decaying rafters. 

Bram remembered the evening when he had heard 
Christian’s laugh in that very pile. 

“ I suppose it is, Bram,” said Chris at last. “ But I 
rather like it in you, all the same. I can’t help laughing 
at you, but I think you’re rather a fine fellow. Now, 
listen to me. You may go on wondering at my behavior 
as much as you like, but you mustn’t yourself have any- 
thing more to do with the Birons. We’ll say I’m jealous, 
Bram, if you like. I really think it’s true, too,” he added 
with a flippancy which belied his words. 

But Bram shook his head solemnly. 

“ No, Mr. Christian,” he answered ; and in the excite- 
ment he felt the strong Yorkshire accent was heard again 
in his voice. You’ve no call to be jealous of me, and you 
know that right well. If I were a gentleman born, like 
you ” 

“ Don’t use that expression, ‘ gentleman born,’ Elshaw,” 


58 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


interrupted Chris lightly. “ It means nothing, for one 
thing. My great-grandfather was a mill hand, or some- 
thing of that sort, and so were the great-grandfathers of 
half the men in the House of Lords. And it sounds odd 
from a man like you, who will be a big pot one of these 
days.” 

“Well, Mr. Christian, if I’d been brought up in a big 
house, like you, and had had my face kept clean and my 
hair curled instead of being allowed to make mud-pies in 
the gutter ” 

“ I wanted to make mud-pies in the gutter ! ” interpo- 
lated Christian cheerfully. 

“ Well, you know what I mean, anyhow. If we’d stood 
just on the same ground ” 

“We never should have stood on the same ground, 
Elshaw,” said Chris with a shrewd smile. 

“ And if I hadn’t been beholden to you for the rise 

I’ve got, I’d have fought you for the place you’ve got 
with her very likely. But, as it is, I’m nowhere ; I don’t 
count. And you know that, Mr. Christian.” 

“ Indeed, I’m very glad to hear it, for if there’s one 
man in the world I should less like to have for a rival 
than another, in love or in anything else, it’s you. Brain. 
I know you’re a lamb outside ; but I can’t help suspect- 
ing that there’s a creature more like a tiger under- 
neath.” 

“ I’m inclined to think myself, Mr. Christian, that the 
creature underneath’s more like an ass,” said Bram good- 
humoredly. 

They were standing at the top of the hill ; it was a 
damp, cold night, and Christian shivered. 

“ You mustn’t stand here talking, Mr. Christian,” said 
Bram. “ You are not so used to strong breezes as me.” 

“Well, good-night; I won’t take you any further. 
You live somewhere about here, I know. But, I say.” 
He called after Bram, who was turning back. “ There’s 
one thing I want to tell you. Don’t say anything to the 
guv’nor about meeting me at the farm.” 

Bram stared blankly, and Christian laughed, 


ANOTHER STEP UPWARD. 


59 


“My dear fellow, don’t you know that these matters 
require to he conducted with a little diplomacy ? When a 
man is dependent upon his father, as he always is if he’s 
a lazy beggar like 'me, that father has to be humored a 
little. I must prepare him gradually for the shock, if I’m 
ever to marry Claire.” 

“ All right, Mr. Christian. I’ll say nothing, of course. 
But I shall be glad to hear that matters are straight. It 
seems hard on the young lady, doesn’t it ? ” 

“ Ah, well, life isn’t all beer and skittles for any of us.” 

Christian called out these words, turning his head as 
he walked rapidly away on the road to Holme Park. 

Bram had made such astonishing progress in the office 
since his promotion, not much more than a year before, 
that nobody but himself was astonished when he was 
called into the private office of the elder Mr. Cornthwaite, 
about a fortnight after his talk with Christian, and was 
formally invited by that gentleman to dine at Holme 
Park in the course of the following week. Bram’s first 
impulse was to apologize for declining the invitation, 
but Mr. Cornthwaite insisted, and with such an air 
of authority that Bram felt there was no escape for 
him. 

But, meeting Christian later in the day, Bram related 
the incident rather as if it were a grievance. 

“You know, Mr. Christian, it’s not in my line, that 
sort of thing. Ah shall make a fool o’ myself. Ah know 
Ah shall.” 

And, either accidentally or on purpose, he dropped again 
into the strong Yorkshire dialect, which since his eleva- 
tion he had worked successfully to overcome. 

But Christian only laughed at his excuses. 

“ You’d be a fool to refuse,” he said shortly. “ I’ll 
take you round to my tailor’s again, and he’ll measure 
you for your war-paint.” 

Bram’s face fell. 

“ Ho, Mr. Christian, no. I’m not going to dress myself 
up. Mr. Cornthwaite won’t expect it, and what would be 
the good of my wasting all that money on clothes you’ll 


60 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


never catch me wearing again ? And the oaf I should 
look in ’em too ! Why, you’d all be laughin’ at me, an’ 
not more than I should be laughin’ at myself.” 

“ Elshaw,” returned Chris gravely, “ the one thing which 
distinguishes you above all the self-made men and born 
geniuses I’ve ever heard about is that you’ve got too 
broad a mind to despise trifles. While Sir George Mil- 
brook, who began as a factory hand, and Jeremiah Mont- 
combe of Gray’s Hall, and a lot of other men who’ve got on 
like them, make a point of dropping their H’s and clip- 
ping their words just as they used to do forty years ago, 
you’ve thought it worth your while to drop your Ah’s and 
your tha’s, till there’s very little trace of them left already, 
and there’ll be none in another year. Well, now, there 
are some more trifles to be mastered, and dressing for 
dinner is one of them. So buck up, old man, and come 
along. And by-the-by, as you’ll always take a hint from 
me, couldn’t you let yourself drop into slang sometimes ? 
Your language is so dreadfully precise, and you use so 
many words that I have to look out in the dictionary.” 

“ Do I, Mr. Christian ? ” asked Bram, surprised. Then 
he laughed and shook his head. “ No, I can’t trust my- 
self as far as the slang yet. It wouldn’t come out right 
perhaps. I shouldn’t have discrimination enough to choose 
between the slang that was all right and the slang which 
would make the ladies look at each other.” 

“ Well, I suppose I must let you have a few months’ 
grace. But it’s only on condition that you smoke an oc- 
casional cigarette, and that you don’t stick so persistently 
to soda water and lemonade, when you’re asked to have 
a drink.” 

“ But, Mr. Christian, I’m not used to wine and spirits, 
not even to beer, and if I was to drink them they would 
get into my head. And as it takes me all my time to 
speak properly and behave so as to pass muster, as it is, 
you’d better leave pretty well alone, and let me keep to 
the soda water.” 

“ Oh, well, as long as you’re not moved by conscientious 
scruples I don’t so much mind. But teetotalism savors 


A CALL AND A DINNER PARTY. 61 

rather too much of tlie Sunday-school and the Anti-To- 
bacco League. Mind, I don’t want to make you an habit- 
ual drunkard, but I should like to feel sure that you 
understand there is a happy medium.” 

“ Oh, yes, I undersand that,” said Bram with a comical 
look ; “ but I wish I hadn’t to go up to the Park Thurs- 
day week all the same.” 

Chris looked at him steadily, and played with his long, 
tawny moustache for a few moments in silence. 

“ So do I. I wish you hadn’t got to go too,” said he at 
last. 

But he would not explain why ; he turned the subject 
by remarking that they mustn’t forget the visit to the 
tailor’s. 


CHAPTER IX. 

A CALL AND A DINNER PARTY. 

It is not to be supposed that Bram had forgotten all 
about Claire Biron, or that he had not been tempted to 
break through the command she had imposed upon him. 
At first he had intended to present himself as usual at the 
farm on the evening after his summary dismissal, and to 
brave her possible displeasure. He felt so sure of her 
kind feeling toward himself that he had very little doubt of 
overcoming her scruples from whatever cause they arose. 

On the very next morning, however, he had come sud- 
denly upon her as he went down the hill towards the 
town ; and Claire had cut him, actually cut him, passing 
him with her eyes on the ground, at a rapid pace. 

Bram was so utterly overwhelmed by this action on 
her part that he stood stupidly staring at her figure as 
it went quickly upwards, uncertain what to do, until she 
turned into the farmyard and disappeared. 

He went on to the office with a dull weight at his heart, 
hoping against hope that she would relent, that she 


62 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


would smile at him with her old friendliness when next 
they met, but unable to stifle the fear that the pleasant 
friendship which had been so much to him was now 
over. 

As to her reasons for this new course of treatment he 
could make no guess which seemed to him at all likely 
to be the right one. She had heard something about 
him, that was her excuse, something not to his discredit, 
but which was, nevertheless, the cause of her sending 
him away. Now, Bram could think of nobody who was 
likely to be able to tell Claire the one fact which might 
have brought about his banishment conceivably, the 
fact that he loved her. He had kept his secret so well 
that he might well feel sure it was in his own power, 
so well that he sometimes honestly doubted whether it 
was a fact at all. 

Besides, even if it had been possible for her to find 
this out, she would not have dismissed him in this curt, 
almost brutal, fashion. 

The more Bram thought about his banishment, the 
farther he seemed to get from a sane conclusion ; but he 
could not rest. He could not dismiss the matter from 
his mind. Full as his new life was of work, of interest, 
of ambitions, of hopes, the thought of Claire haunted 
him. He wondered how she was getting on without him, 
knowing that he had made himself useful to her in a 
hundred ways, and that if she did not miss him, she must 
at least miss the work he did for her. 

And Christian — he had told Bram in so many words 
that he meant to marry his cousin ; yet his visits had 
fallen off in frequency, and Bram had an idea that Claire 
looked unhappy and anxious. 

Bram knew very well that he could get an invitation 
back to the farm at any moment by putting himself in 
the way of Theodore. But he would not do this; he 
would not go back without the invitation, or at least 
the consent of Claire herself. 

So he avoided Theodore, and went up and down the 
hill with an outward air of placid unconcern until the 


A CALL AND A DINNER PARTY. 63 

evening before the day when he was to dine at Mr Corn- 
thwaite’s. 

It was a pleasant October evening ; there was a touch 
of frost in the air, which was bracing and pleasant after 
the heavy atmosphere of the town. When he got close 
to the farmhouse, he saw Claire crossing the farmyard on 
her way to the kitchen door, with a heavy load of wood 
in her arms. It seemed to him that her face looked sad 
and worn, that odd little face which had so little pretti- 
ness in repose except for those who knew the possibili- 
ties for fun, for tenderness, that lay dormant in her 
bright brown eyes. 

He hesitated a moment, and then went quickly through 
the gate. 

“ May I help you. Miss Claire ? ” 

She did not start or pretend to be surprised. She had 
seen him coming. 

She stopped. 

“You know what I told you, that you were not to come 
here again,” she said severely. 

But it was severity which did not frighten him. 

“Well,” he began humbly, “I’ve kept away nearly a 
fortnight.” 

“But I said you were never to come again.” 

“ I don’t think you can have meant it though. You 
would have given me some reason if you had.” 

Claire frowned and tapped her little foot impatiently on 
the ground. 

“Oh, you know, you must know. You are not stupid, 
Mr. Elshaw.” 

“ I’m beginning to think I am,” said Bram, as he began 
to take her load from her with gentle insistence. 

It amused and touched him to note how glad she was, 
in spite of her assumed displeasure, to give her work up 
to him in the old way. He opened the kitchen door, and 
took the wood into the scullery, where Joan was at work, 
just as he used to do for her, and then went through the 
kitchen slowly on his way out again. 

Claire was standing by the big deal table. 


64 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ Thank you, thank you very much,” said she. 

But her tone was not so bright as usual ; she was more 
subdued altogether — a quiet, demure, downcast little girl. 
Bram, making his way with leaden feet to the outer door, 
wanted to say soiiietliing, but hardly knew what. He 
hoped that she would stop him before he reached the 
door, but he was disappointed. He put his hand upon the 
latch and paused. Still she said nothing. He opened the 
door, and glanced back at her. Although the look she 
gave him in return had nothing of invitation in it, he felt 
that there was something in her sad little face which 
made it impossible to leave her like that. 

“ Miss Claire,” said he, and he was surprised to find 
that his voice was husky and not so loud as he expected, 
“ mayn’t I finish the dressing-table ? ” 

“ If you like.” 

Her voice was as husky as his own. 

Without another word he set about the work, found the 
saw, which, by-the-bye, was his own, the wood, and the 
rest of the things he wanted, and in less than ten minutes 
was at work in the old way, and Claire, fetching her 
needlework, was busy by the fire, just as she used to be. 
She was too proud to own it ; but Bram saw quite plainly 
that this quiet re-establishment of the old situation made 
her almost as happy as it did him. 

“ Things going all right. Miss Claire ? ” asked he as he 
took up his plane. 

“ No, of course they’re not. They’re going all wrong, 
as usual. More wrong than usual. Johnson takes more 
advantage than ever of there being nobody to look after 
him properly.” 

Johnson was the farm bailiff, and he had worked all the 
better for the suggestions sharp-sighted Bram had made 
to Claire. Since Bram’s banishment Johnson had been 
rampant again. Claire was quite conscious of this, and 
she turned to another subject, to allow him no opportunity 
of applying her comments. 

“ And you — at least I needn’t ask. You always get on 
all right, don’t you?” 


A CALL AND A DINNER PARTY. 


65 


“ I shall come to grief to-morrow,” answered Bram 
soberly. “ I’ve got to go up to the Park to dinner. What 
do you think of that, Miss Claire ? And to wear a black 
coat and a stiff shirt-front, just like a gentleman ! Won’t 
they all laugh at me when my back’s turned, and talk 
about daws’ and peacocks’ feathers ? It’s all Mr. Chris- 
tian’s fault, so I suppose you will say it’s all right ? ” 

“ It is all right, Bram,” said Claire gravely ; “ and they 
won’t laugh at you. They can’t. You’re too modest. 
And too clever besides.” She paused, dropped her work 
in her lap, and looked intently at the fire. “ Is it true 
that you’re going to be married, Bram ? ” she presently 
asked abruptly. 

“ Married ! Me ! Lord, no. Who told you such a 
thing as that ?” And Bram stood up and looked at her, 
letting his plane lie idle. 

“ Papa said he thought you were. He said you were 
engaged to a girl who lived in the country. You never 
told me about her.” 

“ And is that why you sent me away ? ” 

At his tone of dismay Claire burst out laughing with 
her old hilarity. 

“ Oh, no, oh, no. I sent you away, if you must know, 
because I had heard that you were to go up and dine at 
Holme Park, and because I knew that it would be better 
for you to be able to say there that you didn’t visit us.” 

“ Is that what you call a reason ? ” asked Bram scorn- 
fully, angrily. 

« Yes, that’s one reason.” 

“ Well, well, haven’t you any better ones ? ” 

« Perhaps. But I shan’t tell you any more, so you need 
not ask me for them. I want to know something about 
this girl you’re engaged to.” 

“Not engaged,” said Bram stolidly. 

“ Well, in love with then ? I want to know something 
about her. I think it very strange that I never heard 
anything about her before. What is she like?” 

“ Well, she’s like other girls,” said Bram. “ She is 
much like nine out of every ten girls you meet.” 

5 


66 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ Really ? I shouldn’t have thought you’d care for a 
girl like that, Bram.” 

“You must care for what you can get in this world,” 
said Bram sententiously. 

“ Well, tell me something more. Is she tall or short, 
fair or dark ? Has she blue eyes, or gray ones, or brown ? ” 

Bram looked thoughtful. 

“ W ell, she’s neither tall nor short. She’s not very dark, 
nor yet very fair. And her eyes are a sort of drab color, 
I think.” 

“You don’t mean it, Bram? I suppose you think it’s 
no business of mine ? ” 

“ That’s it. Miss Claire.” 

“ I don’t believe in the existence of this girl with the 
drab-colored eyes, Bram.” 

Claire had jumped up, and darted across to the table in 
her old impulsive way ; and now she stood, her eyes danc- 
ing with suppressed mirth, just as she used to stand in 
the good old days before the rupture of her own mak- 
ing. 

Bram was delighted at the change. 

“ Well, I won’t say whether she exists or not,” replied 
he with a smile lurking about his own mouth ; “ and I don’t 
choose to have my love affairs pried into by anybody, I 
don’t care who. How would you like people to pry into 
yours ? ” 

She grew suddenly grave, and he wished he had not 
said it. 

“ There’s no concealment about mine, Bram,” she said 
quietly. 

“ You’re going to marry Mr. Christian?” 

“ I suppose so.” 

Why did she speak so quietly, so wistfully ? The ques- 
tion troubled Bram, who did not dare to say any more 
upon a subject which she seemed anxious to avoid as much 
as she could. And the talk languished until Claire heard 
her father’s footsteps coming down the stairs. 

“ Now go,” said she imperiously. “ I don’t want you to 
meet papa. And you mustn’t come again. And you 


A CALL AND A DINNER PARTY. 


67 


mustn’t tell them up at Holme Park that you were here 
this evening.” 

Bram frowned. 

“ Miss Claire,” said he, “ I am a deal prouder of coming 
here than I am of going up to t’ Park. And if I’m to 
choose between here and t’ Park, I choose to come here. 
But I shall be let to do as I please, I can promise you. 
But, of course, if you don’t want me here, I won’t 
come.” 

“ Good-night,” said she for answer. 

And she hurried him out of the house, and shut the 
door upon him in time to prevent her father, who was in 
the passage outside, from meeting him. 

Bram went up to the Park on the following evening in 
much better spirits than if he had not had that reassuring 
interview with Claire. He still felt rather troubled as to 
the prospects of the marriage between her and her cousin, 
but he hoped that he might hear something about it in 
the family circle at Holme Park. 

The ordeal of the evening proved less trying than 
the promoted clerk had expected — up to the certain 
point. 

With the ladies of the family he had already become 
acquainted. Mrs. Cornthwaite was a tiresome elderly 
lady of small mental capacity and extremely conservative 
notions, who alternately patronized Bram and betrayed 
her horror at the recollection of his former station. The 
good lady was a perpetual thorn in the side of her hus- 
band, whom she irritated by silly interruptions and sillier 
comments on his remarks, and to her daughter, who had 
to be ever on the alert to ward off the effects of her 
mother’s imbecility. 

The daughter, Hester, was a thoroughly good creature, 
who had been worried into a pessimistic view of life, and 
into a belief that much “good” could be done in the 
world by speaking her mind with frank rudeness upon 
all occasions. The consequence of these peculiarities in 
the ladies of the household was that to spend an evening in 
their society was a torture from which all but the bravest 


68 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


shrank, although every one acknowledged that there were 
the best-intentioned people in the world. 

The only guests besides Bram were Mr. and Mrs. Hibbs 
and their only daughter, whom Brana knew already by 
name and by sight. 

Mr. Hibbs was a coal-owner, a man of large means, and 
a great light in evangelical circles. He was a tall, sallow 
man, with thin whiskers and a deliberate manner of speak- 
ing, as if he were always in the reading-desk, where on 
Sundays he often read the lessons for the day. His wife 
was a comfortable-looking creature, with a round face 
and a round figure, and a habit of gently nodding her 
head after any remark of her husband’s, as if to empha- 
size its wisdom. 

As for Minnie, it struck Bram, as he made her the bow 
he had been practising, that she exactly answered to the 
description he had given Claire of the supposed lady of 
his heart. There was only this difterence, that she was 
distinguished from most young women of her age by the 
exceedingly light color of her eyebrows and eyelashes. 
She appeared to have none until you had the oppor- 
tunity for a very close inspection. 

She had quite a reputation for saintliness, which had 
reached even Bram’s ears. Her whole delight was in 
Sunday-school work and in district visiting, and the dis- 
sipations connected with these occupations. 

She was, however, very cheerful and talkative during 
dinner ; and Bram was surprised to see how very atten- 
tive Christian, who sat by her side, was to this particularly 
unattractive young person, who was the antithesis of all 
he admired. 

For Christian’s good nature did not generally go the 
length of making him more than barely civil to plain 
women. 

Bram found Miss Cornthwaite kind and easy to get on 
with. She was a straightforward, practical woman, on 
the far side of thirty, and this grave, simple-mannered 
young man, with the observant gray eyes, interested and 
pleased her. She tried to intercept the glances of horror 


A CALL AND A DINNER PARTY. 


69 


Which Mrs. Cornthwaite occasionally threw at him, and 
the terrible explanations with which the elder lady con- 
descendingly favored him. 

Thus, when the Riviera was mentioned, Mrs. Corn- 
thwaite threw him the good-natured aside, audible all 
over the room — 

“ The shore of the Mediterranean, you know, the sea 
that lies between France and Italy, and — and those 
places ! ” 

And when some one used the word “ bizarre,” Mrs. 
Cornthwaite smiled at Bram again, and again whispered 
loudly — 

“ Quaint, odd, you know. It’s a French word.” 

“ Mamma, you needn’t explain. Mr. Elshaw speaks bet- 
ter French than we do, I’m quite sure,” said Hester good- 
naturedly enough, though she had better have made no 
comment. 

But Bram said at once, as if grateful to the old lady — 

“ Ho, Miss Cornthwaite, I can read and write French 
pretty well, but I can’t speak it. And when I hear a 
French word spoken I don’t at once catch its meaning.” 

“ There, you see, Hester, I was right. I knew Mr. 
Elshaw would be glad of a little help,” said Mrs. Corn- 
thwaite triumphantly. 

“Very glad, indeed,” assented Bram, quickly interpos- 
ing as Hester was about to continue the argument with 
her mother. 

It was not until the ladies had left the room, and Bram, 
with an amused glance at Christian, had taken a cigarette, 
that the real ordeal of the evening came for the young 
clerk in a shape he had never expected. 

“ I suppose you hardly know, Elshaw,” said Mr. Corn- 
thwaite with a preliminary cough, as if to show that he was 
about to make an announcement of importance, “ why I 
was so particularly anxious for you to dine with us this 
evening ? ” Bram looked interested, as, indeed, he felt. 
“You are aware, Elshaw, of the enormously high opinion 
of your talents which my son has always held. He now 
proposes that you should go to London to represent us in 


70 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


a rather delicate negotiation, in place of himself. And as 
the reason is that he will himself be occupied with pleas- 
anter matters than those of dry business, I thought it 
would interest you to be present on the occasion of the 
first announcement of the pleasanter matter in question. 
It is not less than a wedding 

“ A wedding, sir ? ” Bram’s face clouded with per- 
plexity. 

“Yes, Elshaw. You have had the honor of being in- 
troduced to the young lady this evening. My son has 
been fortunate enough to obtain the heart and a promise 
of the hand of Miss Minnie Hibbs.” 

Bram looked steadily at Christian. He dared not 
speak. 


CHAPTER X. 

THE FINE EYES OP HER CASH-BOX. 

Christian Cornthwaitb pretended to be occupied in 
conversation with his future father-in-law, while Mr. 
Cornthwaite, senior, in his blandest and most good- 
humored tones, made the announcement of his son’s 
intended marriage to the astonished Bram. 

But Christian’s attention was not so deeply engaged 
that he could not take note of what was happening, and 
he noticed the dead silence with which Bram received 
the announcement, and presently stole a furtive look at 
the face of the young clerk. 

Bram caught the look, and replied to it with a steady 
stare. Chris turned his eyes away, but that look of 
Bram’s fascinated him, worried him. In truth, it had 
been his fear of what Elshaw would say, even more than 
his own disinclination, which had kept him hovering on 
the brink of his engagement with Miss Hibbs for so long. 

And now he felt that he would have preferred some out- 
break on Bram’s part to this stony silence. 

Even Josiah Cornthwaite was puzzled by Bram’s recep- 








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THE FINE EYES OF HER CASH-BOX. 


71 


tion of the news. The young man seemed absolutely 
unmoved by the fresh proof of his employer’s confidence 
given in the information that he was to be sent to London 
on important business. He grew even uneasy as Bram’s 
silence 'continued, or was broken only by the briefest and 
coldest of answers. He looked from his son to Bram, and 
perceived that there was some understanding between 
them. And his fears grew apace. He shortened the 
stay in the dining-room, therefore, and letting Mr. Hibbs 
and Chris enter the drawing-room together, he took 
Bram up the stairs, with the excuse of showing him the 
view of the town from one of the windows. 

Bram was shrewd enough to guess that he was to be 
“ pumped.” 

“ This news about my son’s intended marriage seems 
to have taken you by surprise, Elshaw,” said Mr. Corn- 
thwaite as they stood together looking out on the blurred 
lights of the town below. 

“Well, sir, it has,” admitted Bram briefiy. 

“ But you know he is twenty-six, an age at which a 
young man who can afford it ought to be thinking of 
marrying.” 

“ Oh, yes.” 

“You thought, perhaps, that such a volatile fellow 
would be scarcely likely to make such a sensible choice 
as he has done?” went on Josiah with an air of bland 
indulgence, but with some anxiety in his eyes. 

There was a pause. 

“That was what you thought, eh?” repeated Mr. 
Cornthwaite more sharply. 

Bram Elshaw frowned. 

“ Sir, may I speak out ? ” asked he bluntly. 

“ Certainly.” 

“ Well, then, sir, I don’t think it is a wise choice— if it 
was his choice at all, and not yours, sir ? ” 

How, Mr. Cornthwaite, while giving his permission to 
speak out, had not expected such uncompromising frank- 
ness as this. He was taken aback. He stammered as 
he began to answer — 


72 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ Why, why, what do you mean ? Could there be a 
more sensible choice than such a lady as Miss Hibbs ? A 
good daughter, not frivolous, or vain, or flighty ; a sen- 
sible, affectionate girl, devoted to her parents and to good 
works. Just such a girl, in fact, as can be depended upon 
to make a thoroughly good, devoted wife.” 

“ For some sort of men, sir. But not for a man like 
Mr. Christian,” returned Brain with decision. 

His blood was up, and he spoke with as much flrraness 
as, and with more Are than, he had ever before shown to 
his employer. 

Mr. Cornthwaite, who had grounds for feeling uneasy, 
was lenient, patient, attentive, curious. 

“Why, don’t you know, Elshaw,” said he sharply, 
“ that a man should mate with his opposite if he wants 
to be happy ? That grave and serious men like frivolous 
wives ; but that your lively young fellow likes a sober- 
minded wife to keep his house in order?” 

“ Sir, if it’s Mr. Christian’s choice, there’s an end of it,” 
said Bram brusquely. 

“ Of course it’s his choice, none the less, but rather the 
more, that it meets not only with my approval, but with 
that of the ladies of my family,” said Mr. Cornthwaite 
pompously. 

Yet still he was curious, still unsatisfled. And still 
Bram said nothing. 

“Believe me,” Mr. Cornthwaite went on impressively, 
“ a man is none the less amenable to the influence of a 
good wife for having sown his wild oats first. With a 
wife like the one I — no, I mean he has chosen,” a faint 
smile flickered over Bram’s mouth at this correction, 
“my son will settle down into a model husband and 
father. You want the two elements, seriousness on the 
one side, good-humored gayety on the other, to make a 
happy marriage. Why, I ought to know, for these are 
exactly the principles on which I married myself.” 

Mr. Cornthwaite uttered these words with an air of 
bland assurance, which, he thought, must carry convic- 
tion. But his young hearer, unfortunately, had heard 


THE FINE EYES OF HER CASH-BOX. 


73 


enough about the domestic life at Holme Park to know 
that the “ sensible marriage ” on which Mr. Cornthwaite 
prided himself had by no means resulted in domestic 
peace. Tha bickerings of the ill-matched pair were, in 
fact, a constant source of misery to all the household, 
and were used freely by Chris as an excuse for his 
neglect of home. 

Bram, therefore, received this information with court- 
esy, but without comment. Mr. Cornthwaite kept his 
eyes steadily fixed upon the young man, and found him- 
self at last obliged to put a direct question. 

“ You had, I suppose, expected him to make a different 
sort of choice ? ” 

“ Very different, sir.” 

“ Some one, perhaps, whom you would have considered 
better suited to him ?” 

“ Much better suited, sir.” 

Mr. Cornthwaite’s face clouded. 

“ Whom do you mean ? ” 

Bram only hesitated a moment. He could do Chris- 
tian no harm now by telling the truth ; and he had a 
lingering hope that he might bring old Mr. Cornthwaite 
to see the matter with his own eyes. 

“ Sir,” said he, “ have you never suspected your son of 
any attachment, any serious attachment, to a lady as 
good as Miss Hibbs is said to be, and a great deal more 
attractive ? ” 

Bram felt as he said this that he had lapsed into the 
copybook style of conversation which Chris had pointed 
out as one of his besetting sins. But he could not help 
it. He felt the need of some dignity in speaking words 
which he felt to be momentous. 

Mr. Cornthwaite looked deeply annoyed. 

“ I have not,” said he shortly. And again he asked— 
“ Whom do you mean ? ” 

“ Miss Claire Biron, sir,” answered Bram. 

Mr. Cornthwaite’s face darkened still more. 

“ What ! ” cried he in agitation which belied his words. 
“ You believe that my son ever gave that girl a serious 


74 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


thought ? And that the daughter of such a father could 
be a proper match for my son ? Absurd ! Absurd ! Of 
course, you are a very young man ; you have no knowl- 
edge of the world. But I should have thought your 
native shrewdness would have prevented your falling 
into such a mistake as that.” 

Bram said nothing. Mr. Cornthwaite, in spite of the 
scornful tone he had used, was evidently more anxious 
than ever to learn whatever Bram had to tell on the 
subject. After a short silence, therefore, he asked in a 
quieter tone — 

“ How came you to get such a notion into your head, 
Elshaw?” 

“ I knew that they were fond of each other, sir ; and I 
knew that Miss Biron was a young lady of character, and 
what you call tact.” 

“ Tact ! Humbug ! ” said Mr. Cornthwaite shortly. 
“ She is an artful, designing girl, and she and her father 
have done all in their power to entangle my son. But I 
foresaw his danger, and now I flatter myself I have saved 
him. * You, I see, have been taken in by the giiTs little 
mincing ways, just as my son was in danger of being. 
But I warn you not to have anything to do with them. 
They are an artful, scheming pair, both father and daugh- 
ter, and it would be ruin for any man to become connected 
with them — ruin, I say.” 

And he stared anxiously into Bram’s face. 

“ Has she led you on too ? ” he asked presently, with 
great abruptness. 

Bram’s face flushed. 

“ No, sir. She has forbidden me to come to her father’s 
house.” 

“ Ah ! A ruse, a trick to encourage my son ! ” cried the 
old gentleman fiercely. “I wish he were safely married. 
I shall do all in my power to hurry it on. How often have 
you seen him about there? You live near, I believe?” 
said he curtly. 

“ I have seen him now and then, not so very often lately,” 
answered Bram. 


THE FINE EYES OF HER CASH-BOX. 


75 


“Ah, well, you won’t see him there much longer. Miss 
Hibbs will see to that.” 

“ Sir, you are wrong,” cried Bram, whose head and heart 
were on fire'at these accusations against Claire. “ Miss 
Hibbs maybe a good girl, as girls go. I don’t know” 
(Brain’s English gave way here) “nothing against her. 
But I do know you don’t give your son a chance when you 
make him marry a sack o’ meal like that, and him loving 
a flesh-and-blood woman like Miss Biron ! Why, sir, ask 
yourself whether it’s in nature that he should settle down 
to the psalm-singing that would suit her, so as to be happy 
and satisfied to give up his wild ways ? Put it to him 
point blank, sir, which he’d do of his own free will, and 
see what answer you’ll get from him ! ” 

“ I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Cornthwaite 
hastily, “ and I’m exceedingly sorry to find you so much 
more gullible than I had expected, Elshaw. Is it possible 
you didn’t observe how this young woman ran after my 
son ? Coming to this house on every possible occasion 
with some excuse or other ? ” 

“ That was her father’s fault, sir,” retorted Bram hotly. 

“ Probably he had something to do with it ; but she fell 
in with his wishes with remarkable readiness, readiness 
which no modest girl would have shown in the circum- 
stances. She must have seen she was not welcomed with 
any warmth by the heads of the household at least.” 

The blood rushed to Bram’s forehead. The idea of poor 
little Claire creeping unwillingly to the great house on 
one of her father’s miserable errands, only to be snubbed 
and coldly received by every one, struck him like a 
stab. 

“ Surely, sir, there was no place in the world where she 
had so good a right to expect to be well received as here ? ” 
said he, with difficulty controlling the emotion he felt. 
“ A young girl, doing her best to fulfil every duty, with 
no friends, no mother, no father worthy of the name. 
And you are her relations ; here there were women, ladies, 
who knew all about her, and who might be expected to 
sympathize with her difficulties and her troubles ! ” 


76 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


Bram, who spoke slowly, deliberately, choosing his 
words with nice care, but uttering them with deep feeling, 
paused, and looked straight into Mr. Cornthwaite’s face. 
But there was no mercy in the fiery black eyes, or about 
the cold, handsome mouth. 

“ They would have shown her every sympathy,” said 
he coldly, “ if she had not abused the privilege of intimacy 
by trying to ensnare my son.” 

“Mr. Cornthwaite,” interrupted Bram scornfully, “do 
you really think Mr. Christian ever waited for a girl to 
run after him ? Why, for every time Miss Biron’s been 
up here — sent here by her father, mind — he’s been three 
or four or five times down at the farm ! ” 

Mr. Cornthwaite’s eyes blazed. By a quick movement 
he betrayed that this was just what he had wanted to 
know. His face clouded more than before. 

“ Ah ! ” said he shortly, “ that’s what I’ve been told. 
Well, it’s the girl’s own doing. If she’s got herself into a 
scrape, she has no one but herself to thank for it, no one. 
Shall we join the ladies in the drawing-room ? ” 

He led the way downstairs, and Bram followed in dead 
silence. 

A horrible, sickly fear had seized his heart ; he could 
not but understand the imputation Mr. Cornthwaite had 
made, accompanied as it was by a look, the significance 
of which there was no mistaking. 

Claire, poor little helpless Claire, the cherished idol of 
his imagination and of his heart, lay under the most cruel 
suspicion which can assail a woman, the suspicion of hav- 
ing held her honor too lightly. 

Bram, shocked beyond measure, recoiled at the bare 
mention of this suspicion in connection with the girl he 
worshipped. The next moment he cast the thought be- 
hind him as utterly base, and felt that he had disgraced 
himself and her by the momentary harboring of it. 

But as for Mr. Cornthwaite, Bram felt that he hated 
the smug, elderly gentleman, who troubled himself not 
in the least about the helpless, friendless girl who loved 
his son, and whose only thought was to hurry his son 


THE PINE EYES OF HER CASH-BOX. 77 

into a heartless marriage in order to “ save him from ” 
the danger of his repairing his supposed error. 

In these circumstances, Bram lost all self-conscious- 
ness, all remembrance of his unaccustomed dress, of his 
attitudes, of his awkwardness, and entered the drawing- 
room utterly absorbed in thoughts of Claire. Old Mrs. 
Cornthwaite, who was fumbling about with a lapful of 
feminine trifles, smelling-bottle, handkerchief, spectacle- 
case, dropped one of them, and he hastened to pick 
it up. 

“ Thank you,” said she, with a gracious, good-humored 
smile, “ you are more attentive than any of the grand 
folk.” 

“ Mamma,” cried Hester in fldgety exasperation. And 
good-naturedly fearing that he might have been hurt by 
her mother’s lack of tact, she opened the old-fashioned, 
but not unhelpful, album of photographs, which lay on 
a table near her, and asked him if he cared for pictures 
of Swiss scenery. 

“ Not much. Miss Hester,” said Bram. 

But he went up to the table, encouraged by her kind 
manners, by the honest look in her eyes, in the hope that 
he might find a supporter in her of the cause he had at 
heart. 

“ But I should like to see some photographs of you and 
Mr. Christian, if you have any.” 

She opened another album, smiling as she did so, and 
offering him a chair near her, which he immediately took. 

“ I never show these unless I am asked,” she said. 
“ Family photographs I always think uninteresting, except 
to the family.” 

“And to those interested in the family,” amended 
Bram. “ You see. Miss Hester, there’s hardly another 
thing in the world I care about so much. That’s only 
natural, isn’t it, after what I’ve been treated like at their 
hands.” 

He was conscious that his English was getting doubt- 
ful under the influence of the emotion which he could not 
master. But Miss Cornthwaite seemed, of course, not to 


78 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


notice this. She was extremely well disposed towards 
this frank young man with the earnest eyes, the heavy, 
obstinate mouth, and the long, straight chin, which gave 
so much character to his pale face. 

“ Christian always speaks of you with such boyish de- 
light, as if he had discovered you bound hand and foot in 
the midst of cannibals who wanted to eat you,” said she 
laughing. 

“ So he did, Miss Hester,” answered Bram gravely, 
almost harshly. 

He could not speak, could not think of Chris just now 
without betraying something of the emotion the name 
aroused in him. And he glanced angrily across to the 
corner where Chris was sitting beside prim little Miss 
Hibbs, who was giggling gently at his remarks, but clasp- 
ing her hands tightly together, and keeping her arms 
pinned closely to her sides, as if she felt that she was 
unbending more than was meet, and that she must 
atone for a little surface hilarity by this penitential atti- 
tude. 

Hester Cornthwaite noticed the glance thrown by Bram, 
and felt curious. 

“ I am very glad he is going to be married,” she said 
quickly, with an intuition that he would not agree with 
her. Bram looked her full in the face in a sudden and 
aggressive manner. 

“ Why are you glad ? ” he asked abruptly. 

She was rather disconcerted for a moment. 

“ Why ? Oh, because I think it will be good for him, 
that he will be happier, that he will settle down,” she 
answered with a little confusion. 

Surely he must know as well as she did that there were 
many reasons for wishing Chris to grow more steady. 
A little prim suggestion of this feeling was noticeable in 
her tone. 

“ I don’t think he would settle down, if so he was to 
marry a girl he didn’t care for,” said Bram bluntly. “ And 
I should have thought you would agree with me, under- 
standing Mr. Christian as you do. Miss Hester.” 


THE FINE EYES OF HER CASH-BOX. 7D 

Miss Cornthwaite drew her lips rather primly together. 

“ He does care for her, of course,” said she rather tartly, 
“ else why shoruld he marry her ? ” 

Bram smiled, and gave her a glance of something like 
scorn. 

“ There are a good many reasons why he should marry 
to please Mr. Cornthwaite, your father, when he can’t 
marry to please himself.” 

“ Why can’t he ? Who does he want to marry ? ” asked 
Miss Cornthwaite quickly. 

“ Why, Miss Biron, Miss Claire Biron, of Duke’s Farm,” 
replied honest Bram promptly. 

Hester’s thin and rather wizened face flushed. She 
frowned ; she looked annoyed. “ Dear me ! I never heard 
anything about it,” she said testily. “ And I can hardly 
think he would wish to do anything so very unwise. 
Christian isn’t stupid, though he’s rather volatile.” 

“ Stupid ! No, indeed. That he should want to marry 
Miss Biron is no proof of stupidity. Where could he And 
a nicer wife ? How could you expect him to sit and look 
contentedly at Miss Hibbs when there is such a girl as 
Miss Biron within ten miles ? ” 

Hester looked more prim than ever. 

“ You seem very enthusiastic, Mr. Elshaw. Pray, what 
have you to say about Mr. Biron?” 

“Well, Mr. Christian wouldn’t have to marry him.” 

“ That is just what he would have to do,” retorted 
she quickly. “ Mr. Biron would take good care of that. 
Christian would never be able to shake him oif.” 

“Well,” said Bram, “he can’t shake him off now, can 
he ? So he would be no worse off.” 

“ Now, seriously, Mr. Elshaw, would you like to have 
such a father-in-law yourself?” 

Bram’s heart leapt up. But he did not tell the young 
lady that he only wished he had the chance. Instead of 
that, he answered in a particularly grave and judicial 
tone — 

“If I had. I’d soon bring him to reason. He’s not 
stupid either, you see. I’d make an arrangement with 


80 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


him, and I’d make him keep to it. And if he didn’t keep 
to it ” 

“ And he certainly wouldn’t. What then ? ” 

Well, then perhaps I’d get rid of him some way, Miss 
Hester.” 

“I certainly shouldn’t advise my brother to run the 
risk of having to do that, and all for a girl much too vola- 
tile to make him a good wife. Why, she is nearly half 
French.” 

Bram looked at her quickly. 

“ Surely, Miss Hester, you who have travelled and been 
about the world, don’t think the worse of a lady for 
that ? ” 

Miss Cornthwaite reddened, but she stuck to her guns. 

“ I hope I am above any silly insular prejudice,” she 
said coldly. “ But I certainly think the French character 
too frivolous for an Englishman’s wife. Why, when 
Claire comes here, though she will sob as if her heart was 
breaking one moment at the humiliations her father ex- 
poses her to, she will be laughing heartily the next.” 

“ Poor child, poor child ! Thank heaven she can,” said 
Bram with solemn tenderness which made Miss Corn- 
thwaite just a little ashamed of herself. “ And don’t you 
think a temper like that would come in handy for Mr. 
Christian’s wife, as well as for Mr. Biron’s daughter ? ” 
Oh, perhaps,” said Miss Cornthwaite very frigidly, as 
she stretched out her hand quickly for a fresh book to 
show him. 

Poor Claire had no partisan here. 


CHAPTER XI. 

BRAM SHOWS HIMSELF IN A NEW LIGHT. 

Now, Christian felt throughout the evening that Bram 
was avoiding his eyes, saving himself up, as it were, for 
an attack of eye and tongue, a combat in which Chris 
would have all he could do to hold his own. 


BRAM SHOWS HIMSELF IN A NEW LIGHT. 81 


Christian was fond of Bram, fonder even, perhaps, than 
Bram, with' his honest admiration and indulgence, was of 
him. The steady, earnest character of the sturdy man 
of the people, with his straightforward simplicity, his 
shrewdness, and his blunt outspokenness when his opin- 
ion was asked, had constant attraction for the less simple, 
but more amiable, son of the owner of the works. He 
wanted to put himself right with Bram, and to do it in 
such a way as to put Bram in the wrong. 

He tried to get an opportunity of a chat with the sullen- 
looking young clerk, who, however, avoided this chance 
more cleverly than Chris sought it. 

At the close of the evening, when Bram had reeled off 
without a mistake the elaborate speech of thanks to Mrs. 
Cornthwaite which he had prepared beforehand, he con- 
trived very cleverly to slip out of the house while Chris 
was occupied with the perfunctory attentions demanded 
by his fiancee. And with the start he thus obtained, 
he contrived to reach the foot of Hassel Hill before he 
became aware that he was being followed. 

“ Hallo ! ” cried out a bright voice, which he knew to 
be that of Chris. “ Hallo ! ” 

Bram did not answer, did not slacken his pace, but 
went straight on up the hill, leaving Chris to follow or 
not as he pleased. 

He had reached the outer gate of Duke’s Farm before 
Chris came in sight, toiling up the steep road in silence 
after him. Then the pursuer called out again. Some- 
body besides Bram recognized the voice, for a minute 
later Bram saw a light struck in an upper window of the 
farm. The window was thrown up, and somebody looked 
out. Bram, however, stalked upwards in silence still. 

He had reached the first of the row of cottages on the 
top of the hill, when Chris, making a last spurt, over- 
took him, and seized him by the arm. 

“ Bram, Bram, what’s the matter with you ? I’ve been 
panting and puffing after you for a thousand miles, and I 
can’t get you to turn that wooden head of yours. Come, 
I know what’s wrong with you, and I mean to have it 
6 


82 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


out with you at once, and have done with it. So come 
along.” 

He had already hooked his arm within that of the 
unwilling Bram, who held himself stiffly, stubbornly, 
with an air which seemed to say — “ Well, if you want it, 
you can have it.” 

And so, the one eager, defiant, impetuous, the other 
stolid and taciturn, the two men walked past the rows of 
mean cottages, past Bram’s own lodgings, and up to the 
very summit of the hill, where the ruined, patched-up, and 
re-ruined mansion was, and the disused coal shaft with 
its towering chimney. 

“ And now,” cried Chris, suddenly stopping and swing- 
ing Bram round to face him in the darkness, “ we are 
coming to an understanding.” 

“Very well, sir.” 

“Now, don’t ‘sir’ me, but tell me if you’re not 
ashamed of yourself ” 

“ Me ashamed of myself ! I like that ! ” cried Bram 
with a short laugh. “But that’s the way with you 
gentlemen. If you please, we’ll not have any talk about 
this, because honor and honesty don’t mean the same 
thing to you as to me.” 

“ That’s a nasty one,” retorted Chris in his usual airy 
tone. “ Now, look here, Bram, although you’re so entirely 
unreasonable that you don’t deserve it, I’m going to con- 
descend to argue with you, and to prove to you the 
absurdity of your conduct in treating me like this.” 

“ Like what, Mr Christian ? ” 

“Oh, you know. Don’t let’s waste time. You are 
angry because I’m marrying Miss Hibbs ” 

“ No,” said Bram obstinately. “ I’m not angry with you 
for marrying Miss Hibbs. I’m angry because you’re not 
marrying the girl you love, the girl you’ve taught to 
love you.” 

“Same thing, Bram. I can’t marry them both, you 
know.” 

Bram shook his arm free angrily. 

“Mr. Christian, we won’t talk about this no more,” 


BRAM SHOWS HIMSELF IN A NEW LIGHT. 83 

said he in a voice which was hoarse, and strained, and 
unlike his own. “I might say things I shouldn’t like 
to. Let me go, sir ; let me go home, and do you go home 
and leave me alone.” 

“No, I won’t leave you till we’ve threshed the matter 
out. Be reasonable, Bram. You know as well as I do 
that I’m dependent on my father ” 

“You knew that all along. But you said, you told 
me ” 

“ I told you that I wanted to marry my cousin Claire. 
Well, so I did. But my father wouldn’t hear of it; 
apart from the objection he has to the marriage of 
cousins ” 

“ That’s new, that is,” put in Bram shortly. 

“ Apart from that, I say, he wouldn’t have anything to 
say to the match for a dozen reasons. You know that. 
And, knowing how I’m placed, it is highly ridiculous of 
you to make all this fuss, especially as you, no doubt, 
intend to use the opportunity to cut in yourself.” 

His tone changed, and Bram detected real pique, real 
jealousy in these last words. 

Bram heard this in dead silence. 

“You do, eh?” went on Chris more sharply. 

“No, Mr. Christian, I do not. I couldn’t come after 
you in a girl’s heart.” 

“ Why not ? You are too modest, Bram.” 

Perhaps Chris flattered himself that he spoke in his 
usual tone ; hut an unpleasant, jeering note was clearly 
discernible to Bram Elshaw’s ears. Christian went on 
in a more jarring tone than ever. 

“ Or have you been so far penetrated with the maxims 
of the Sunday-school that you would not allow a girl a 
little harmless flirtation ? ” 

“Flirtation!” echoed Bram angrily. “It was more 
than that, Mr. Christian, more than that— to her ! ” 

“ It was nothing more than that,” said Chris emphati- 
cally. “ I have done the girl no harm.” 

Before the words were out of his mouth Bram had 
sprung forward with the savagery of a wild animal. In 


84 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


the obscurity of the cloudy night his eyes gleamed, and 
with set teeth and clenched fists he came close to Chris- 
tian, staring into his eyes, stammering in his vehemence. 

“ If you had,” whispered he almost inaudibly, but with 
passion which infected Christian and awed him into 
silence, “ If you had done her — any — harm, I’d ha’ stran- 
gled you, Mr. Christian. I’d ha’ gone down to t’ works, 
when you was there, and I’d ha’ taken one o’ t’ leather 
bands o’ t’ wheels, and I’d ha’ twisted it round your neck, 
Mr. Christian, and I’d ha’ pulled, and pulled, till I saw 
t’ eyes start out o’ your head, and t’ blood come bursting 
out o’ your mouth. And I’d ha’ held you, and tightened 
it, and tightened it till the breath was out o’ your body ! ” 

When he had finished, Bram still stood close to Chris- 
tian, glaring at him with wild, bloodshot eyes. Christian 
tried to laugh, but he turned suddenly away, almost stag- 
gering. He felt sick and faint. It was Bram who recov- 
ered himself first. He confronted Chris quickly, looking 
ashamed, penitent, abashed. 

“ Ah shouldn’t ha’ said what Ah did,” said he, just in 
his old voice, as if he had been again a mere hand at the 
works. “ It was not for me to say it, owing what Ah do 
to you, Mr. Christian. But — by — I meant it all the same.” 
And again the strange new Bram fiashed out for a mo- 
ment. “And I’m thinking, Mr. Christian,” he went on, 
resuming the more refined tones of his later development, 
“ that it will be best for me to leave the works altogether, 
for it can never be the same for you and me after to-night. 
You can’t forgive me for what I’ve said, and — well, I feel 
I should be more comfortable away, if it’s the same to 
you.” 

There was a pause, hardly lasting more than a few 
seconds, and then Chris spoke, with a hoarse and altered 
voice, but in nearly his ordinary tones — 

“ But it’s not the same to me or to us, not at all the 
same, Bram. My delinquencies, real or imaginary, can- 
not be allowed to come between my father and the best 
clerk he ever had, the man who is to make up for my 
business shortcomings. So-so if you please, Elshaw, I’ll 


BEAM SHOWS HIMSELF IN A NEW LIGHT. 85 

take my chance of the strangling, though, mind you, I 
should have thought you might have discovered some 
more refined mode of making away with me, something 
just as effective, and — and nicer to look at.” 

His voice was tremulous, and he did not look at Bram, 
though he succeeded pretty well in maintaining a light 
tone. Bram laughed shortly. 

“ My refinement’s only skin deep, you see, Mr. Christian. 
I told you so. The raw Sheffielder’s very near the top. 
And in these fine clothes, too ! ” 

He glanced down rather scornfully at the brand-new 
overcoat, and at the glazed expanse of unaccustomed 
shirt-front which showed underneath. 

There was another pause. Both the young men were 
trembling violently, and found it pretty hard to keep up 
talk at this placid level of commonplace. Quite suddenly 
Chris said — “Well, good-night, Elshaw,” and started on 
his way back to Holme Park at a good pace. 

Bram drew a long breath. He had just gone through 
an experience so hideous, so horrible, that he felt as if he 
had been seared, branded with a hot iron. For the first 
time he realized now what he had been simple enough not 
to suspect before, that Christian had never for a moment 
seriously entertained the idea of marrying Claire. 

And yet he was in love with her! Bram’s, loving 
Claire himself, was clear-sighted and not to be deceived 
on this point. Christian loved her still enough to be 
jealous of any other man’s feelings for her. He had be- 
trayed this fact in every word, in every tone. If, then, 
he loved her and did not mean to marry her, he, the ir- 
resistible, the spoilt child of the sex, what right had he to 
love her, to make her love him ? What motive had he 
in passing so much of his time at Duke’s Farm ? 

And there darted into poor Bram’s heart a jealous, 
mad fear that was like a poison in his blood. He 
clenched his teeth, he shook his fists in the air ; again the 
wild, fierce passion which had swept over him at Chris- 
tian’s stabbing words seized him and possessed him. 

He turned quickly, as if to start in pursuit of Chris, 


86 FOEGE AND FURNACE. 

when a low sound, a cry, stopped him, turned him as if 
into stone. 

For, at a little distance from him, between where he 
stood and the retreating figure half-way down the hill, 
stood Claire. 

An exclamation escaped his lips. She ran panting to- 
wards him. 


CHAPTER XII. 

A MODEL PATHEE. 

Dakk as the night was, the moon being so thickly ob- 
scured by clouds that she never showed her face except 
through a fiying film of vapor, Claire seemed to detect 
something alarming in Brain’s attitude, something which 
caused her to pause as she was running up the hill 
towards him. 

At last she stopped altogether, and they stood looking 
each at the figure of the other, motionless, and without 
speaking. 

As for Bram, he felt that if he tried to utter a single 
word he should choke. He could not understand or an- 
alyze his own feeling; he did not well know whether his 
faith in her innocence and purity remained intact. All 
he knew, all he felt, as he looked at the little creature 
who seemed so pitifully small and slight as she stood 
alone on the hillside, wrapt tightly in a long cloak, but 
shivering in the night air, was that his whole heart was 
sore for her, that he ached for pity and distress, that he 
did not know what he should say, what he could do, to 
comfort and console her. 

At last she seemed to take courage, and came a few 
steps nearer. 

“ Mr. Elshaw ! ” 

“ Yes, Miss Claire.” 

She started, and no wonder. For his voice was as 
much changed as were the sentiments he felt for her. 



An exclamation escaped his lips. She ran panting towards him. 

— Page 86. 




A MODEL FATHER. 87 

She came a little nearer still, with hesitating feet, be- 
fore she spoke again. 

“Was that — wasn’t that my cousin, Christian Corn- 
thwaite, who went away when he saw me ? ” 

It was Bram’s turn to start. So that was the reason 
of the sudden flight of Chris ! He had seen and recog- 
nized the flgure of Claire as she came up the hill behind 
Bram. 

“ Yes, Miss Claire.” 

Another pause. She was near enough now to peer up 
into his face with some chance of discerning the expres- 
sion he wore. It was one of anxiety, of tenderness. She 
drew back a little. 

“ I — I heard him call — I heard a voice call out ‘ Hallo !’ ” 
she explained, “and I jumped up, and looked out of the 
window, and I saw you, and I saw my cousin following 
you. And you would not answer him. But he still went 
on. And — and I was frightened ; I thought something 
dreadful had happened, that you had quarrelled ; so I 
got up and came up after you. And I saw ” 

She stopped. Bram said nothing. But he turned his 
head away, unable to look at her. Her voice, now that 
she spoke under the influence of some strong emotion, 
played upon his heartstrings like the wind upon an ^ol- 
ian harp. He made a movement as if to bid her go on 
with her story. 

“ I saw,” she added in a lower voice, “ I saw you spring 
upon him as if you were going to knock him down. You 
had been quarrelling. I’m sure you had. And I was 
frightened. I screamed out, but you didn’t hear me, 
either of you ; you were too full of what you were saying 
to each other. And it was about me ; I know it was 
about me. Now, wasn’t it?” 

Bram was astonished. 

“What makes you think that. Miss Claire? Did you 
hear anything ? ” 

“ Ah ! ” cried she quickly. “ That’s a confession. It 
was about me you were quarreling. Can’t you tell me all 
about it at once ? ” 


88 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


But Bram did not dare. He moved restlessly from the 
one foot to the other, and suddenly said — 

“ You’re cold ; you’re shivering. You’ll catch an awful 
chill if you stay up here. Just go down back to the farm, 
Miss Claire, like a good girl” — and unconsciously his 
tone assumed the caressing accents one uses to a favorite 
child — “ and you shall hear all you want to know in the 
morning.” 

But she stood her ground, making an impatient move- 
ment with one foot. 

“ No, Bram, you must tell me now. What was it all 
about ? ” 

He hesitated. Even if he were able to put her off now, 
which seemed unlikely, she must hear the truth some 
day. It was only selfishness, the horror of himself giv- 
ing her pain, which urged him to be reticent now. So he 
said to himself, doggedly preparing for his avowal. His 
anger against the Cornthwaites, his fear of hurting her, 
combined to make his tone sullen and almost fierce as he 
answered — 

“Well, Miss Claire, I was angry wi’ him because I 
thought he hadn’t behaved as he ought.” 

There was a pause. It seemed to Bram that she 
guessed, with feminine quickness, what was coming. She 
spoke, after another of the short pauses with which their 
conversation was broken up, in a very low and studiously- 
restrained tone — 

“ How ? To whom, Bram ? ” 

“ To — to you. Miss Claire,” answered Bram with blunt 
desperation. 

Another silence. 

“ Why, what has he done to me ? ” asked she at last. 

“ He has gone and got engaged — to be married — to 
somebody else ; that’s what he’s done, there ! ” 

Bram was fiercer than ever. 

“ Well, and what of that ? ” 

He could not see her face, and her tone was one of 
careless bravado. But Bram was not deceived. He 
clenched his fists till the nails went deep into his fiesh. 


A MODEL FATHER. 


89 


It cut him in the heart to have to tell her this news, to 
feel what she must be suffering. He answered as quietly 
as he could. 

“ Nothing, but that I think he ought — he ought ” 

“ You think he ought to have told me. Oh, I guessed, 
I guessed what was going to happen,” replied Claire 
rapidly in an off-hand tone. “ I should have heard it 
from himself to-morrow. Who — who is it?” 

“ A Miss Hibbs.” 

“ Oh, yes, of course. I might have known.” 

But her voice trembled, and Bram, turning quickly, 
saw that the tears were running down her cheeks. She 
was angry at being thus caught, and she dashed them 
away impatiently. 

“ D him ! ” roared Bram, clenching his fists and 

his teeth. 

“ Hush, Bram, hush ! Bm surprised. I’m ashamed of 
you ! And, besides, what does it matter to you or to me 
either whom Mr. Cornthwaite marries ? ” 

“ It does matter. He ought to have married you, and 
taken you away out of the place, and away from the life 

you have to live with that old rascal 

Bram was beside himself; he did not know what he 
was saying. Claire stopped him, but very gently, saying — 
« Hush, Bram. He’s my father.” 

« Well, I know that, but he’s a rascal all the same,” 
said Bram bluntly. “ And Mr. Christian knows it, and 
he had ought to be glad to have the chance of taking you 
away, and making you happier. He’s behaved like a 
fool, too, for the girl his father’s foand for him will never 
get on with him, never make him happy, like you would 
have done. Miss Claire. He is just made a rod for his 
own back, and it serves him jolly well right ! ” 

Claire did not interrupt him ; she was crying quietly, 
every tear she let fall increasing Bram’s rage, and throw- 
ing fuel on the fire of his indignation. Perhaps his anger 
soothed her a little, for it was in a very subdued little 
voice that she presently said — 

“ Oh, Bram, I don’t think that ! I do wish him to be 


90 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


happy ! Indeed, indeed I do. And if it wasn’t for one 
thing I should be very, very glad he’s going to marry 
somebody else — very, very glad, really ! ” 

Bram had come a little nearer to her ; he spoke earnestly, 
tenderly, with a voice that trembled. 

“ You’re fond of him ? ” said he, quickly, imperiously. 

“ Yes, I’m very fond of him. He’s my cousin, and he’s 
always been kind to me. But I didn’t want to marry 
him. Oh, I didn’t want to marry him ! ” 

Bram was astonished, incredulous. He spoke brusque- 
ly, almost harshly. 

“ He thought you did. He thought you cared for him. 
So did I, so did everybody.” 

“Yes. I know that. He’s so popular that people take 
it for granted one must care for him. But I didn’t — in 
the way you mean.” 

Bram was still dubious. 

“ Then, why,” said he suddenly, “ do you take this so 
much to heart?” 

Claire made a valiant attempt to dry her eyes and steady 
her voice. 

“ Because,” said she in a hesitating voice, “ because of 
— of — because of papa ! He wanted me to marry him ; 
he counted on it ; and now — oh, dear, I don’t know what 
he will do, what he will say. Well, it can’t be helped. 
I must go back ; I must go home. Good-bye ; good-night ! ” 

Before Bram could do more than babble out “ Good- 
night, Miss Claire,” she had flown like the wind down 
the hill towards the farm. 

Bram went back to his lodging in a sort of delirium. 
Was it possible that Claire had spoken the truth to him ? 
That she really cared not a straw for her cousin except 
in a cousinly way ; that all she was troubled about was 
her father’s displeasure at having missed such a chance 
of a connection with the family of the long purse. 

Bram understood very little about the nature of women. 
But he had, of course, acquired the usual vague notions 
concerning the reticence, the ruses of girls in love, and 
he could not help feeling that in Claire’s denial there was 


A MODEL FATHER. 


91 


matter for distrust. How, indeed, should she, this little 
friendless girl who had no other lovers, fail to respond to 
the affection of a man as attractive, both to men and 
women, as Chris Cornthwaite ? And did not the behavior 
of Chris himself confirm this view ? If Claire had not 
cared for him, why should he have received Bram’s 
frowns, his angry reproaches, with something which was 
almost meekness, if he had felt them to be absolutely un- 
deserved ? The more he considered this, the more im- 
possible it seemed that Claire’s lame explanation of her 
tears, of her distress, could be the true one. It seemed 
to Bram that Theo Biron, with his shrewdness and his 
cunning, must have been the very person to feel most 
sure that Josiah Cornthwaite would never allow the 
marriage of Chris with Claire. 

Again, why, if she had not felt a most deep interest in 
Chris had she taken such a bold step as to follow him 
up the hill that night? Surely it must have been in the 
hope of speaking with him, perhaps of reassuring herself 
from his own lips on the subject of the rumors of his 
approaching marriage, which must have reached her ? 
If, too, Chris had had nothing to reproach himself with 
on her account, why had he fied so quickly, so abruptly, 
at the first sight of her ? 

More and more gloomy grew Bram Elshaw’s thoughts 
as he approached the cottage where he lodged, passed 
through the little bit of cramped garden, and let himself 
in. Entering his little sitting-room, and striking a light, 
he found a note addressed to himself lying on the table. 
The writing of the envelope was unknown to him, and he 
opened it with some curiosity. The letter was stamped 
with this heading — “The Vicarage, East Grindley.” 

“ Grindley ! East Grindley ! ” thought Bram to him- 
self. “ Why, that’s where my father’s people came from ! ” 

And he read the letter with some interest. It was this : 

“ Dear Sir, — I am sorry to inform you that Mr. Abra- 
ham Elshaw, who is some relation of yours, though he 
hardly seems himself to know in what degree, is very ill, 


92 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


and not expected to live many days. He has desired me 
to write and ask you if you will make an effort to come 
and see him without delay. I may tell you that I under- 
stand Mr. Elshaw has heard of the rapid manner in which 
you are getting on in the world ; he has, in fact, often 
spoken of you to us with much pride, and he is anxious to 
see you about the disposal of the little property of which 
he is possessed. 1 need not ask you under the circum- 
stances to come with as little delay as possible. — Yours 
very truly, 

“Bernard G. Thorpe. 

“P. S. — Mr Elshaw has been a member of my congrega- 
tion for many years, and he chose me rather than one of 
his own relations to open communication with you. I 
should have preferred his choosing one of them, but he 
refused, saying they were unknown to you, so that I could 
not refuse to fulfil his wishes.” 

Bram put down the letter with a rather grim smile. He 
had never seen this namesake of his, but he had heard a good 
deal about him. An eccentric old fellow, not a rich man 
by any means, he had saved a few hundred pounds in trade 
of the smallest and most pettifogging kind, on the strength 
of which he had given himself great airs for the last quar- 
ter of a century among the pit hands and mill hands and 
grinders who formed his family and acquaintance. A 
sturdy, stubborn, miserly old man, of whose hard-fisted- 
ness and petty money-grabbing Bram had heard many tales. 
But the family was proud of him, though it loved him not. 
Bram remembered clearly how, when he was a very small 
child, his father had gone out on a strike with his mates, 
and his poor mother, at her wits’ end for a meal, had ap- 
plied to the great Abraham for a small loan, and how it 
had been curtly and contemptuously refused. 

This was just the man, this hard-fisted, self -helping old 
saver of halfpence, to bestow upon the successful and pros- 
perous young relation the money of which he would not 
have lent him a cent if he had been starving. Bram told 


A MODEL FATHER. 


93 


himself that he must go, of course : and he resolved to do 
his best with the old man for those unknown relations who 
might be more in want of the money than he himself was. 
For he was shrewd enough to foresee that old Abraham’s 
intention was to make his prosperous young relation heir 
to what little he possessed. He resolved to ask next morn- 
ing for a day off, and to go at once to East Grindley. 

Bram got the required permission easily enough, and 
went on the very next day to see his reputed wealthy 
namesake. East Grindley was a good many miles north 
of Sheffield and it was late in the day before he returned. 

Throughout the whole of the day he had been haunted 
by thoughts of Claire ; and no sooner had he had his tea 
than he determined to go to the farm, with the excuse of 
asking if she had caught cold the night before. 

He was in a fever of doubt, anxiety, and only half-ac- 
knowledged hope. He had wished, honestly wished, when 
he believed Claire to be as fond of Chris as Chris was of 
her, that the cousins should marry, that little Claire should 
be taken right out of her troubles and her difficulties, and 
set down in a palace of peace and content, of luxury and 
beauty, with the man of her heart. But if those words of 
Claire’s uttered to him the night before were really true, 
might there not be a chance that he might win her him- 
self ? That he might be the lucky man who should build 
her a palace, and lift her from misery into happiness ? 

Bram knew that Claire liked him ; knew that the dis- 
tance between himself and her, which had seemed im- 
measurable thirteen months before, had diminished, and 
was every day diminishing. If, indeed she did not care, 
had never cared for her cousin with the love Bram wanted, 
who had a better chance with her than himself, whom she 
knew so well, and trusted so completely ? 

Bram with all his humility, was proud in his own way, 
and exceedingly jealous. If Claire had loved her cousin 
passionately, and had been jilted by him, as Bram had 
believed to be the case, he did not feel that he should even 
have wished to take the vacant place in her heart. No 
doubt the wish would have come in time, but not at once. 


94 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


If, however, it were true that she had not cared for Chris 
in the only way of which Bram would have been jealous, 
why, then, indeed, there was hope of the most brilliant 
kind. 

Bram, on his way to the farm, began to see in his heart 
such visions as love only can build and paint, love, too, 
that has not taken the edge off itself, frittered itself away, 
on the innumerable flirtations with which his daily com- 
panions at the office beguiled the dead monotony of exist- 
ence. 

In his new life, as in his old, it was Brain’s lot to be 
“ chaffed ” daily on his unimpressionability, on the stolid, 
matter-of-fact way in which he went about his daily work, 
“ as if,” as the other clerks said, “ his eyes could see 
nothing better in the world than paper and ink, print and 
figures.” 

Bram on these occasions was accustomed to put on an 
air of extra stolidity, and to shake his head, and declare 
that he had no time to think of anything but his work. 
And all the time he wondered to himself at the ease with 
which they could chatter of their affection for this girl 
and that, and enjoy the jokes which were levelled at 
them, and wear their heart upon their sleeve with ill- 
concealed delight. 

And he smiled to himself at their mistake, and went 
on nourishing his heart with its own chosen food in 
secret, with raptures that nobody guessed. 

And now the thought that his dreamy hopes might 
grow into realities brought the color to his pale cheeks 
and new lustre to his steady gray eyes, as he walked 
soberly down the hill, and entered the farmyard in the 
yellow sunlight of the end of a fine day in September. 

He knocked at the kitchen door, and nobody answered. 
He knpcked more loudly, fancying that he heard voices 
inside the house. But again without result. So he 
opened the door, and peeped in. A small fire was 
burning in the big grate, but there was nobody in the 
room. With the door open, however, the voices he had 
faintly heard became louder, and he became aware that 


A MODEL FATHER. 95 

an altercation was going on between Claire and her father 
in the front part of the house. 

He was on the point of retiring, therefore, with a sigh 
for the poor little girl, when a cry, uttered by her in a 
wailing tone, reached his ears, and acted upon his startled 
senses like flaming pitch on tow. 

“ Oh, papa, don’t, don’t hurt me ! ” 

The next moment Bram had burst the opposite door 
open, and saw Theodore, his little, mean face wrinkled 
up with malice, strike Claire’s face sharply with his open 
hand. This was in the hall, outside the dining-room door. 

Ho sooner was the blow given than Bram seized Theo- 
dore, lifted him into the air, and flung him down against 
the door of the dining-room with such force that it burst 
open, and Mr. Biron lay sprawling just inside the room. 

Claire, her cheek still white from the blow, her eyes 
full of tears of shame, rushed forward, ready to champion 
her father. 

“ Go away,” she said in a strangled, breathless voice. 
“Go away. How dare you hurt my father? You have 
no right to come here. Go away.” 

She tried to speak severely, harshly, but the tears 
were running down her face; she was heart-broken, 
miserable, full of such deep humiliation that she could 
scarcely meet his eyes. But Bram did not heed her, did 
not hear her perhaps. He was himself trembling with 
emotion, and his eyes shone with that liquid lustre, that 
yearning of long-repressed passion, which no words can 
explain away, no eyewitness can mistake. 

He stretched out his hand, without a single word, and 
took both hers in one strong clasp. And the moment 
she felt his touch her voice failed, died away ; she bent 
down her head, and burst into a fit of weeping more 
passionate than ever. 

“ Hush, my dear ; hush ! Don’t cry. Remember, it’s 
only me ; it’s only Bram.” 

He had bent his head too, and was leaning over her 
with such tender yearning, such undisguised affection, in 
look, manner, voice, that no girl could have doubted what 


96 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


feeling it was which animated him. With his disengaged 
hand he softly touched her hair, every nerve in his own 
body thrilling with a sensation he had never known before. 

“ Hush, hush ! ” 

The whisper was a confession. It seemed to tell what 
love he had cherished for her during all these months ; a 
love which gave him now not only the duty, but the 
right of comforting her, of soothing the poor little 
bruised heart, of calming the weary spirit. 

“ Hush, dear, hush ! ” 

Whether it was a minute, whether it was an hour, 
that they stood like this in the little stone-flagged hall 
in the cool light of the dying September evening, Bram 
did not know. He was intoxicated, mad. It was only by 
strong self-control that he refrained from pressing her to 
his breast. He had to tell himself that he must not take 
advantage of her weakness, he must not extort from her 
while she was crushed, broken, a word, a promise, an assur- 
ance, which her stronger, her real self would shudder at or 
regret. She must feel, she must know, that he, Bram, 
was her comforter, the tender guardian who asked no 
price, who was ready to soothe, to champion, and to wait. 

Meanwhile the strong man found in his own sensation 
reward enough and to spare. Here, with her heart 
beating very near his, was the only woman who had ever 
lit in him the flery light of passion; her little hands 
trembled in his, the tender flesh pressing his own hard 
palm with a convulsive touch which set his veins tingling. 
The scent of her hair was an intoxicating perfume in his 
nostrils. Every sobbing breath she drew seemed to 
sound a new note of sweetest music in his heart. 

At last, when he had been silent for some seconds, she 
suddenly drew herself back, with a face red with shame; 
with eyes which dared not meet his. Reluctantly he let 
her drag her hands away from him, and watched her 
wipe her wet eyes. 

“ Papa ! Where is he ? ” asked she quickly. 

Staggering, unsteady, hardly knowing where he went, 
or what he did, Bram crossed the hall, and looked into 


A MODEL FATHER. 


97 


the dining-room. But the lively Theodore was not there. 
He turned and came face to face with Claire, who was 
redder than ever, the place where her father had struck 
her glowing with vivid crimson which put the other 
cheek to shame. 

She moved back a step, looking about also. Then she 
went quickly out of the room, and recrossed the hall to 
the drawing-room. But her father was not there either. 
Back in the hall again, she met Bram, and they glanced 
shyly each into the face of the other. 

Both felt that the fact of their having let Mr. Biron 
disappear without having noticed him was a mutual con- 
fession. Claire looked troubled, frightened. 

“I wonder^” said she in a low voice, “where he has 
gone ? ” 

But Bram did not share her anxiety. There was no 
fear that Mr. Biron would let either rage or despair carry 
him to the point of doing anything rash or dangerous to 
himself. 

“He’ll turn up presently,” said he, with a scornful 
movement of the head, “ never fear. Miss Claire. Have 
you got anything for me to do this evening? You’re 
running short of wood, I think.” 

He walked back into the kitchen, which, being the 
least frequented by the fastidious Theodore, was Bram’s 
favorite part of the house. In a few moments Claire 
came softly in after him. She seemed rather constrained, 
rather stiff, and this made Bram very careful, very sub- 
dued. But there was a delicious peace, a new hope in 
his own heart ; she had rested within the shelter of his 
arms ; she had been comforted there. 

“ You ought not to have come this evening, Bram,” she 
said with studied primness. “ You know, I told you that 
before. It only makes things worse for me, it does really.” 

“ Now, how can you make that out ? ” asked Bram 
bluntly. 

“ Why, papa will be all the angrier with me afterwards. 

As for for what you saw him do, I don’t care a bit. It 

makes me angry for the time, and just gives me spirit 

7 


98 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


enough to hold out when he wants me to do anything I 
won’t do, I can’t do.” 

“ What was it he wanted you to do ? ” asked Bram, 
grinding his teeth. 

Claire hesitated. She grew crimson again, and the 
tears rushed once more to her eyes. 

“ I’d rather not tell you.” Then as she noticed the ex- 
pression on Bram’s face grow darker and more menacing, 
she went on quickly — “ Well, it was only that he wanted 
me to go up to Holme Park again to-night — with a note — 
the usual note. And that I can’t — non:) /” 

Bram’s heart sank. Of course, she meant that it was 
the engagement of Chris which made this difference. 
But why should this be, if she did not care for him ? 
Bram came nearer to her, leaned on the table, and looked 
into her face. What an endless fascination the little 
features had for him. When she looked down, as she did 
now, he never knew what would be the expression of her 
brown eyes when she looked up, whether they would 
dance with fun, or touch him by a queer, dreamy, expres- 
sion, or whether there would be in them such infinite 
sadness that he would be forced into silent sympathy. 
Bram waited impatiently for her to look up. 

As he came nearer and nearer, she still looking down, 
but conscious of his approach, a new thought came into 
his mind, a cruel, a bitter thought. Suddenly he stood 
up, still leaning over the corner of the table. 

“ Are you what they call a coquette. Miss Claire ? ” he 
asked with blunt earnestness. 

She looked up quickly then, with a restless, defiant 
sparkle in her eyes. 

“Perhaps I am. French people, French^ women, are all 
supposed to be, aren’t they ? And my grandmother was 
French. Why do you ask me? ” 

“ Because I don’t understand you,” answered Bram in 
a low, thick voice. “ Because you tell me you don’t care 
for Mr. Christian, and I should like to believe you. But 
you tell me to keep away, and yet — and yet — whenever I 
come you make me think you want me to come again, 


A MODEL FATHER. 


99 


though you tell me to go. But surely, surely, you wouldn’t 
play with me; you wouldn’t condescend to do that, would 
you ? Now, would you ? ” 

She looked up again, stepping back a little as she did 
so; and there was in her eyes such a look of beautiful 
confidence, of kindness, of sweet, girlish affection, that 
Bram’s heart leapt up. He had promptly sat down again 
on the table, and was bending towards her with passion 
in his eyes, when there stole round the half-open door 
the little, mean, fair face of Theodore. 

Bram sprang up, and stood at once in an attitude of 
angry defiance. 

But Theodore, quite unabashed, was in the room in half 
a second, holding out his pretty white hand with a smile 
which was meant to be frankness itself. 

“ Mr. Elshaw,” said he, “ we must shake hands. I won’t 
allow you to refuse. I owe you no grudge for the way 
you treated me a short time ago ; on the contrary, I 
thank you for it. I thank you ” 

“ Papa ! ” cried poor Claire. 

He waved her into silence. 

“ I thank you,” he persisted obstinately, “ for remind- 
ing me that I was treating my darling daughter too 
harshly, much too harshly. Claire, I am sorry. You will 
forgive me, won’t you ? ” 

And he put his hand on her shoulder, and imprinted 
delicately on her forehead a butterfly kiss. Claire said 
nothing at all. She had become quite pale, and stood 
with a face of cold gravity, with her eyes cast down, while 
her father talked. 

Bram felt that he should have liked to kick him. In- 
stead of that he had to give his reluctant hand to the airy 
Mr. Biron, an act which he performed with the worst 
possible grace. 

« You must stay to supper,” said Theodore. » Oh, yes ; 
I want a talk with you. About this marriage of my 
young kinsman, Chris Cornthwaite. Frankly, I think 
the match a most ill-chosen one. He would have done 
much better to marry my little girl here ” 


100 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ Papa ! ” cried Claire angrily, impatiently. 

“ Only, unfortunately for him^ she didn’t care enough 
about him.” 

Claire drew a long breath. Bram looked up. Theo- 
dore, in his hurry to secure for his daughter another 
eligible suitor whom he saw to be well disposed for the 
position, was showing his hand a trifle too plainly. 
Bram grew restless. Claire said sharply that they could 
not ask Mr. Elshaw to supper, as she had nothing to 
offer him. She was almost rude ; but Bram, whose 
heart ached for the poor child, gave her a glance which 
was forgiveness, tenderness itself. He said he could not 
stay, and explained that he had been out all day on an 
errand, which had tired him. To All up a pause, he told 
the story of his eccentric kinsman. 

“ And he means to leave me all his money, whatever 
it is,” went on Bram. “ He showed me the box he keeps 
it in, and told me in so many words that it would be 
mine within a few days. And all because he thinks I’ve 
got on. If I’d been still a hand at the works down there, 
and hard up for the price of a pair of boots, I shouldn’t 
have had a penny.” 

“ Ah, well, it will be none the less welcome when it 
comes,” said Mr. Biron brightly. “ What is the amount 
of your fortune ? Something handsome, I hope.” 

“ I don’t know yet, Mr. Biron. NTot enough to call a 
fortune, I expect.” 

“ Well, you must come and tell us about it when it’s 
all settled. There’s nobody who takes more interest in 
you and your affairs than my daughter and I — eh, Claire ? ” 

But Claire affected to be too busy to hear ; she was 
engaged in making the fire burn up, and at the first op- 
portunity she stole out of the room, unseen by her father. 
So that Bram, who soon after took his departure, did not 
see her again. 

He went back to his lodging in a fever. This new 
turn of affairs, this anxiety of Theodore’s to make him 
come forward in the place of Christian, filled him with 
dismay. On the very first signs of this disposition in 


A MODEL FATHER. 


101 


her father Claire had shrunk back into herself and had 
refused to give him so much as another look. But then 
that was only the natural resentment of a modest girl ; 
it proved, it disproved nothing but that she refused to be 
thrown at any man’s head. That look she had given him 
just before her father’s entrance, on the other hand, had 
been eloquent enough to set him on fire with something 
more definite than dreamy hope. If it had not betrayed 
the very love and trust for which he was longing, it had 
expressed something very near akin to that feeling. Brain 
lived that night in alternate states of fever and frost. 

He dared not, however, for fear of giving pain to Claire, 
go to the farm again for the next fortnight. He would 
linger about the farmyard gate, and sometimes he would 
catch sight of Claire. But on these occasions she turned 
her back upon him with so cold and decided a snub that 
it was impossible for him to advance in face of a repulse 
so marked. And even when Theodore lay in wait for 
him, and tried to induce him to go home with him, Bram 
had to refuse for the sake of the very girl he was long- 
ing to see. 

Meanwhile the date of Christian’s marriage with Miss 
Hibbs was rapidly approaching. Chris maintained an 
easy demeanor with Bram, but that young man was 
stiff, reserved, and shy, and received the confidences, real 
or pretended, of the other without comment or sympathy. 
When Chris lamented that he could not make a match to 
please himself, Bram looked in front of him, and said 
nothing. When he made attempts to sound Bram on the 
subject of Claire, the young clerk parried his questions 
with perfect stolidity. 

The day of the wedding was a holiday at the works, 
and Bram, who dared not spend the day at the farm, as 
he would have liked to do, and who had refused to take 
any part in the festivities, paid another visit to old 
Abraham Elshaw at East Grindley as an excuse for stay- 
ing away. 

He returned, however, early in the evening, and was 
on his way up the hill by way of the fields, when, to his 


102 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


unbounded amazement, he saw a side-gate in the wall of 
the farmhouse garden open quickly, and a man steal out, 
and run hurriedly down across the grass in the direction 
of the town. 

Bram felt sure that there was something wrong, but he 
had hardly gone a few steps with the intention of inter- 
cepting the man, when he stopped short. Something in 
the man’s walk, even at this distance, struck him. In 
another moment, in spite of the fact that the stealthy 
visitor wore a travelling cap well over his eyes, Bram 
recognized Chris Cornthwaite. 

Stupefied with dread, Bram glanced back, and saw 
Claire standing at the little gate, watching Chris as he 
ran. Shading her eyes with her hand, for the glare of 
the setting sun came full upon her face, she waited until 
he was out of sight behind a stone wall which separated 
the last of the fields he crossed from the road. Then 
she shut the gate, locked it, and went indoors. 

Bram stared at the farmhouse, the windows of which 
were shining like jewels in the setting sun. He felt sick 
and cold. 

What was the meaning of this secret visit of Chris 
Cornthwaite to Claire on his wedding day ? 


CHAPTER XHI. 

AN ILL-MATCHED PAIR. 

Hobodt but simple-hearted Bram Elshaw, perhaps, 
would have been able to doubt any longer after what he 
had seen that there was something stronger than cousinly 
affection between Christian Cornthwaite and Claire. 
But even this wild visit of Chris to his cousin on his very 
wedding day did not create more than a momentary 
doubt, a flying suspicion, in the heart of the devoted 
Bram. 

Had he not looked into her dark eyes not many days 


AN ILL-]yiATCHED PAIR. 


103 


before, and read there every virtue and every quality 
which can make womanhood sweet and noble and dear ? 

Unluckily, Chris had been seen on this mysterious 
visit by others besides Bram. 

It was not long after the wedding day that Josiah 
Cornthwaite found occasion, when Bram was alone with 
him in his office, to break out into invective against the 
girl who, so he said, was trying to destroy every chance 
of happiness for his son. Bram, who could not help 
knowing to what girl he referred, made no comment, but 
waited stolidly for the information which he saw that 
Mr. Cornthwaite was anxious to impart. 

“ I think even you, Elshaw, who advocated this young 
woman so warmly a little while ago, will have to alter 
your opinion now.” As Bram still looked blank, he 
went on impatiently — “Don’t pretend to misunderstand. 
You know very well whom T mean — Claire Biron, of 
Duke’s Farm. 

“ It has come to my ears that my son had a meeting 
with her on his wedding day ” 

Bram’s countenance looked more blank than ever. 
Mr. Cornthwaite went on — 

“ I know what I am talking about, and I speak from 
the fullest information. She 'sent him a note that very 
morning; everybody knows about it; my daughterboard 
her say it was to be given to Mr. Christian at once, and 
that it was from his cousin Miss Biron. Is that evi- 
dence enough for you ? ” 

Bram trembled. 

“ There must be some other explanation than the one 
you have put upon it, sir,” said he quietly but decidedly. 
“ Miss Biron often had to write notes on behalf of her 
father,” he suggested respectfully. 

“Pshaw! Would any message of that sort, a mere 
begging letter, an attempt to borrow money, have induced 
my son to take the singular, the unprecedented action 
that he did? Surprising, nay, insulting, his wife before 
she had been his wife two hours.” 

Bram heard the story with tingling ears and downcast 


104 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


eyes. That there was some truth in it no one knew 
better than he. Had he not the confirmatory evidence of 
his own eyes? Yet still he persisted in doggedly doubt- 
ing the inference Mr. Cornthwaite would have forced upon 
him. His employer was waiting in stony silence for some 
answer, some comment. So at last he looked up, and 
spoke out bravely the thoughts that were in his mind. 

“ Sir,” said he steadily, “ the one thing this visit of Mr. 
Christian’s proves beyond any doubt is that he was in 
love with her at the time you made him marry another 
woman. It doesn’t prove anything against Miss Biron, 
until you have heard a great deal more than you have 
done so far, at least. You must excuse me, sir, for speak- 
ing so frankly, but you insisted on my telling you what I 
thought.” 

Mr. Cornthwaite was displeased. But as he had, in- 
deed, forced the young man to speak, he could not very 
well reproach him for obeying. Besides, he was used to 
Bram’s uncompromising bluntness, and was prepared to 
hear what he really thought from his lips. 

“ I can’t understand the young men of the present 
generation,” he said crossly, with a wave of the hand to 
intimate to Bram that he had done with him. “ When I 
was between twenty and thirty, I looked for good looks 
in a girl, for a pair of fine eyes, for a fine figure, for a 
pair of rosy cheeks. Now it seems that women can dis- 
pense with all those attributes, and bowl the men over 
like ninepins with nothing but a little thread of a lisping 
voice and a trick of casting down a pair of eyes which are 
anything but what I should call fine. But I suppose I am 
old-fashioned.” 

Bram retired respectfully without offering any sugges- 
tion as to the reason of this surprising change of taste. 

He was in a tumult of secret anxiety. He felt that he 
could no longer keep away from the farm, that he must 
risk everything to try to get an explanation from Claire. 
If she would trust him with the truth, and he believed her 
confidence in himself to be great enough for this, he could, 
he thought, clear her name in the eyes of the angry Josiah. 


AN ILL-MATCHED PAIR. 105 

It was intolerable to him that the girl he worshipped as 
devotedly as ever should lie under a foul suspicion. 

So that very evening, as soon as he had left the ofiBce, 
he went straight to the farm. It was his last day before 
starting on the mission with which he was to be intrusted 
in the place of Chris, who was on his honeymoon. This 
was an excellent excuse for a visit, which might not, he 
feared, be well received. 

He was more struck than ever as he approached the 
farmyard gate with a fact which had been patent to all 
eyes of late. The tenants of Duke’s Farm had fallen on 
evil days. Everything about the place betrayed the fact 
that a guiding hand was wanting ; while Bram had kept 
an eye on the farm bailiff things had gone pretty smoothly, 
fences had been repaired, the stock had been well looked 
after. Now there were signs of neglect upon everything. 
The wheat was still un stacked ; the thatch at one end of 
the big barn was broken and defective ; a couple of pigs 
had strayed from the farmyard into the garden, and were 
rooting up whatever took their fancy. 

Bram leaned on the gate, and looked sorrowfully 
around. 

Was it by chance that the back door opened, and Joan, 
the good-humored Yorkshire servant, peeped out ? She 
looked at him for a few minutes very steadily, and then 
she beckoned him with a brawny arm. He came across 
the yard at once. 

“ Look here, mister,” said she in her broadly familiar 
manner, “ what have ye been away so long for ? Do ye 
think there’s nought to be done here now? Or have ye 
grown too grand for us poor folks ? ” 

He laughed rather bitterly. 

“ No, Joan, I’ve only kept away because I’m not 
wanted.” 

“ Hark to him ! ” she cried ironically, as she planted 
her hands on her hips, and glanced up at him with a 
shrewd look in her gray-green clever eyes. “ He wants to 
be pressed now, when he used to be glad enoof to sneak 
in and take his chance of a welcome! Well, Ah could 


106 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


tell a tale if Ah liked, and put the poor, modest fellow at 
his ease, that Ah could ! ” 

Bram’s face flushed. 

“ Do you mean she wants me ? ” he asked so simply 
that Joan burst into a good-humored laugh. 

“ Go ye in and see,” said she with a stupendous nod. 
“ And if ye get the chuck aht, blame it on to me ! ” 

Brain took the hint, and went in. Joan followed, and 
pointed to a chair by the table, where Claire sat bending 
over some work by the light of a candle. The evening 
was a gray one, and the light was already dim in the big 
farm kitchen. 

“ Here’s a friend coom to see ye who doan’t coom so 
often as he might,” cried Joan, following close on the 
visitor’s heels. Claire was looking up with eyes in which 
Bram, with a pang, noted a new look of fear and dismay. 
For the first time within his recent memory she did not 
seem glad to see him. He stopped. 

“I’ve only come. Miss Claire,” said he in a very modest 
voice, “to tell you I’m going to London to-morrow on 
business for the Arm. I shall be away ten days or a fort- 
night ; and I came to know whether there was anything 
I could do for you, either before I go or while I’m there. 
But if there’s nothing, or if I’m in the way ” 

“You’re never in anybody’s way, Mr. Elshaw,” said she 
quite cordially, but without the hearty ring there used to 
be in her welcome. “ Please, sit down.” 

She offered him a chair, and he took it, while Joan, 
round about whose wide mouth a malicious smile was 
playing, disappeared into her own precincts of scullery 
and back-kitchen. 

For some minutes there was dead silence, not the happy 
silence of two friends so secure in their friendship that 
they need not talk — the old-time silence which they had 
both loved, but a constrained, uncomfortable taciturnity, 
a leaden, speechless pause, during which Bram watched 
with feverish eyes the little face as it bent over her work, 
and noted that the outline of her cheek had grown 
sharper. 


AN ILL-MATCHED PAIR. 


107 


He tried to speak, to break the horrid silence which 
weighed upon them both. But he could not. It seemed 
to him that there was something different about this 
meeting from any they had ever had, that the air was 
heavy with impending disaster. 

He spoke suddenly at last in a husky voice. 

“ Miss Claire, I want you to tell me something.” 

She looked up quickly, with anxiety in her eyes. But 
she said nothing. 

“I want you to tell me,” he went on, assuming a tone 
which was almost bullying in his excitement, “ why Mr. 
Christian came to see you the day he was married ? ” 

To his horror she stood up, pushing back her chair, 
moving as if with no other object than to hide the frantic 
emotion she was seized with at these words. There 
passed over her face a look of anguish which he never 
forgot as she answered in a low, breathless voice. 

“ Hush, I cannot tell you. You must not ask. You 
must never ask. And you must never speak about it 
again, never, never ! ” 

Bram leaned over the table, and looked straight into 
her eyes. In every line of her face he read the truth. 

“ He asked you to — to go away with him ! ” he growled, 
hardly above his breath. 

“ Hush ! ” cried she. “ Hush ! I don’t know how you 
know ; I hope, oh, I pray that nobody else knows. I want 
to forget it ! I will forget it ! If I had to go through it 
again it would kill me ! ” 

And, dry-eyed, she fell into a violent fit of shudder- 
ing, and sank down in her chair with her head in her 
hands. 

“ The scoundrel ! ” said Bram in a terrible whisper. 

And there came into his face that look, that fierce peep 
out of the primitive north country savage, which had 
startled Chris himself one memorable night. 

Claire saw it, and she grew white as the dead. 

“ Bram,” cried she hoarsely, “ don’t look like that ; don’t 
speak like that. You frighten me ! ” 

But he looked at her with eyes which did not see. This 


108 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


fulfilment of his fears, of his doubts of Chris, was a shock 
she could not understand. 

There was a pause before he was able to speak. Then 
he repeated vaguely — 

“ Frightened you, Miss Claire ! I didn’t mean to do 
that!” 

But the look on his face had not changed. Claire leaned 
across the table, touched his sleeve impatiently, timidly. 

“ Bram,” said she in a shrill voice, sharpened by alarm, 
“ you are to forget it too ! Do you hear ? ” 

He turned upon her suddenly. 

“ No,” said he, “ you can’t make me do that ! ” 

“But I say you must, you shall. Oh, Bram, if you 
had been here, if you had heard him, you would have been 
sorry for him, you would have pitied him, as I did ! ” 
Bram leaped up from his chair. All the fury in his 
eyes seemed now to be concentrated upon her. 

“ You pitied him ! You were sorry for him ! For a 
black-hearted rascal like that ! ” 

“ Oh, Bram, Bram, don’t you know that those are only 
words ! When you see a man you’ve always liked, been 
fond of, who has always been happy and bright, and full 
of fun and liveliness, quite suddenly changed, and broken 
down, and wretched, you don’t stop to ask yourself whether 
he’s a good man or a bad one. Now, do you, Bram?” 

“You ought to!” rejoined Bram in fierce Puritanism 
militant. “You ought to have used your chance of 
showing him what a wicked thing he was doing to his 
poor wife as well as you ! ” 

“ Oh, Bram, I did. I said what I could ! ” 

“ Not half enough, I’ll warrant ! ” retorted he, clenching 
his fist. “ You didn’t tell him he was a blackguard who 
ought to be kicked from one end of the county to the 
other ! And that you’d never speak to him again as long 
as you lived ! ’ . 

“No, I certainly didn’t.” 

“ Then,” almost shouted Bram, bringing his fist down 
on the table with a threatening, sounding thump, “ you 
ought to be ashamed of yourself! You good women do 


AN ILL-MATCHED PAIR. 


109 


as much harm as the bad ones, for you are just as tender 
and sweet to men when they do wrong as when they do 
right. You encourage them in their wicked ways, when 
you should be stand-off and proud. I do believe, God 
forgive me for saying so, you care more for Mr. Chris 
now than you did before ! ” 

Claire, who was very white, waited a moment when he 
had come to the end of his accusation. Then she said in 
a weak, timid, little voice, but with steadiness — 

“ It is true, I believe, that I like him better than I did 
before. You are too hard, Bram ; you make no allowance 
for anything.” 

“ There are some things no allowance should be made 
for.” 

“ Well, there’s one thing you forget, and that is that 
I’ve not been used to good people, so that I am not so 
hard as you are. I’ve never known a good man except 
you, Bram, but then I’ve never known one so severe upon 
others either.” 

“ You shouldn’t say that, Miss Claire; I’m not hard.” 

« Oh ! ” 

“ Or if I am, it’s only so as I shouldn’t be too soft ! ” 
cried he, suddenly breaking down into gentleness, and 
forgetting his grammar at the same time. “It’s only be- 
cause you’ve got nobody to take care of you, nobody to 
keep harm away from you, that I want you to be harder 
yourself ! ” 

There was a pause. Claire was evidently touched by 
his solicitude. Presently she spoke, persuasively, affec- 
tionately, but with caution. 

“ Bram, if I promise to be hard, very hard, will you 
give me a promise back ? ” 

“ What’s that?” 

“Will you promise me that you will forget” — Bram 
shook his head, and at once began a fierce, angry protest — 
“well, that you will say nothing about this. Come, you 
are bound in honor, because I told you in confidence ” 

“ No, you didn’t ; I found out ! ” 

“ You can’t deny that I have told you some things in 


no 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


confidence. Now, listen. You can do no good, and you 
may do harm by speaking about this. You must behave 
to Christian as if you knew nothing. It is of no use for 
you to shake your head. I insist. And remember, it is 
the only way you have of proving to me that you are not 
hard. Why, what about the poor wife you pretended to 
be so anxious about just now ? Isn’t it for her advantage 
as well as mine that this awful, dreadful mistake should 
be forgotten ? ” 

There was no denying this. Bram hung his head. At 
last he looked up, and said shortly — 

“ If I promise to behave as if I hadn’t heard will you 
promise me not to see Mr. Christian again ? ” 

Claire fiushed proudly. But when she answered it was 
in a gentle, kind voiceo 

“ You won’t trust me, Bram ?” 

“ I think it will be better for the wife, for you, for him, 
for everybody, if you profnise.” 

“ Very well. I promise to do my best not to see him 
again.” 

She was looking very grave. Bram stared at her 
anxiously. She got up suddenly, and looked at him as if 
in dismissal. He held out his hand. 

“ Good-bye, Miss Claire. You forgive my rough manners, 
don’t you ? If only you had somebody better than me to 
take care of you, I wouldn’t be so meddlesome. Good- 
bye. God bless you 1 ” 

He wanted to say a great deal more ; he wanted to know 
a great deal more ; but he dared not risk another word. 
Giving her hand a quick, firm pressure, which she returned 
without looking up, and with a restraint and reserve 
which warned him to be careful, he hurried out of the 
house. 


THE DELUGE. 


Ill 


CHAPTER XIV. 

THE DELUGE. 

Beam was away much longer than the ten days he had 
expected. Difficulties arose in the transaction of the affair 
which had called him to London ; he had to take a trip to 
Brussels, to return to London, and then to visit Brussels 
again. It was two months after his departure from Shef- 
field before he came back. 

In the meantime old Abraham Elshaw, his namesake, 
had died. A letter was forwarded to Bram informing 
him of the fact, and also that by the direction of the de- 
ceased the precious box in which the old man had kept 
his property had been sent to Bram’s address at Hessel. 

Bram acknowledged the letter, and sent directions to 
his landlady for the safe keeping of the box containing his 
legacy. 

When he got back home to his lodging, one cold night 
at the end of November, Bram received the box, and set 
about examining its contents. It was a strong oak minia- 
ture chest, hinged and padlocked. As there was no key, 
Bram had to force the padlock. The contents were varied 
and curious. On the top was a Post Office Savings Bank 
book, proving the depositor to have had two hundred and 
thirty-five pounds to his credit. Next came a packet of 
papers relating to old Elshaw’s transactions with a build- 
ing society, by the failure of which he appeared to have 
lost some ninety -six pounds. Then there were some gas 
shares and some deeds which proved him to have been the 
owner of certain small house property in the village where 
he had lived. Next came a silver teapot, containind noth- 
ing but some scraps of tissue paper and a button. And 
at the bottom of the box was a very old-fashioned man’s 
gold watch, with a chased case, a large oval brooch con- 


112 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


taining a woman’s hair arranged in a pattern on a white 
ground, and a broken gold sleeve-link. 

Bram, who, from inquiries he had made, considered him- 
self at liberty to apply all the money to his own uses, the 
other relations of old Abraham not being near enough or 
dear enough to have a right to a share, looked thought- 
fully at the papers, and then put them carefully away. 
He knew what the old man had apparently not known, 
that there were formalities to be gone through before he 
could claim the house property. He should have to con- 
sult a solicitor. There was no doubt that his windfall 
would prove more valuable than he had expected, and 
again his thoughts flew to Claire, and he asked himself 
whether there was a chance that he might be able to 
devote his little fortune to the building of that palace 
which his love had already planned — in the air. 

He told himself that he was a fool to be so diffident, 
but he could not drive the feeling away. The truth was 
that there was still at the bottom of his heart some jeal- 
ousy left of the lively Chris, some proud doubt whether 
Claire’s heart was as free as she had declared it to be. 

But if, on the one hand, she had spoken compassionately 
of her erring cousin, there was to be remembered, as a 
set-off against that, the delicious moment when she had 
stood contented in the shelter of Bram’s own arms on that 
memorable evening when he had, for the second time, pro- 
tected her from the violence of her father. 

On the whole, Bram felt that it was time to make the 
plunge ; now, when he had money at his command, when 
he was in a position to take her right out of her dangers 
and her difficulties. With Theodore, who was not with- 
out intelligence, a bargain could be made, and Bram could 
not doubt that this moment, when the supplies had been 
cut off at Holme Park, and the farm was going to ruin, 
would be a favorable one for his purpose. 

He resolved to go boldly to Claire the very next day. 

When the morning broke, a bright, clear morning, 
with a touch of frost in the air, Bram sprung out of bed 
with the feeling that there were great things to be done. 


THE DELUGE. 


113 


The sun was bright on the hill when he started, though 
down far below his feet the town lay buried in a smoky 
mist. Just before he reached the farmyard gate he 
paused, looking eagerly for the figure which was gener- 
ally to be seen busily engaged about the place at this hour 
of the morning. 

But he was disappointed. Claire was nowhere to be 
seen. 

Reluctantly Bram went on his way down the hill, when 
the chirpy, light voice of Theodore Biron, calling to him 
from the front of the house, made him stop and turn 
round. Mr. Biron was in riding costume, with a hunting 
crop in his hand. He was very neat, very smart, and far 
more prosperous-looking than he had been for some time. 
He played with his moustache with one hand, while with 
the other he jauntily beckoned Bram to come back. 

“ Hallo ! ” said Bram, returning readily enough on the 
chance of seeing Claire. “Where are you off to so early, 
Mr. Biron ? I didn’t think you ever tried to pick up the 
worm.” 

“ Going to have a day with the hounds,” replied Theo- 
dore cheerfully. “ They meet at Clinker’s Cross to-day. 
I picked up a clever little mare the other day — bought 
her for a mere song, and I am going to try her at a fence 
or two. Come round and see her. Do you know any- 
thing about hunters, Elshaw?” 

“ No,” replied the astonished Bram, who knew that Mr. 
Biron’s purse had not lately allowed him to know much 
about hunters either. 

“ Ah ! ” said Theodore, as he opened the garden gate for 
Bram to enter, and led him into the house. “ All the better 
for you. When you’ve once got to think you know some- 
thing about horse-flesh, you can’t sit down quietly with- 
out a decent nag or two in your stable.” 

And Mr. Biron, whose every word caused Bram fresh 
astonishment, flung back the door of the kitchen with a 
jaunty hand. 

Bram followed him, but stopped short at the sight 
which met his eyes. 

8 


114 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


Springing up with a low cry from a stool by the fire on 
B ram’s entrance, Claire, with a face so white, so drawn 
that he hardly knew her, stared at him with a fixed look 
of horror which seemed to freeze his blood. 

“Miss Claire! ” he said hoarsely. 

She said nothing. With her arms held tightly down 
by her sides, she continued to stare at him as if at some 
creature the sight of whom had seized her with unspeak- 
able terror. He came forward, much disturbed, holding 
out his hand. 

“Come, come, Claire, what’s the matter with you? 
Aren’t you glad to see Bram Elshaw back among us ? ” 
said Theodore impatiently. 

Still she did not move. Bram, chilled, frightened, did 
not know what to do. Mr. Biron left the outer door, by 
which he stood, and advanced petulantly towards his 
daughter. But before he could reach her she staggered, 
drew away from him, and with a frightened glance from 
Bram to him, fied across the room and disappeared. 

Bram was thrown into the utmost consternation by this 
behavior. He had turned to watch the door by which 
she had made her escape, when Theodore seized him by 
the arm, and dragged him impatiently towards the outer 
door. 

“ Come, come,” said he, “ don’t trouble your head about 
her. She’s not been well lately ; she’s been out of sorts. 
I’ve talked of leaving the place, and she doesn’t like the 
idea. She’ll soon be herself again. Her cousin Chris has 
been round two or three times since his return from his 
honeymoon trying to cheer her up. But she won’t be 
cheered ; I suppose she enjoys being miserable sometimes. 
Most ladies do.” 

Bram, who had followed Mr. Biron with leaden feet 
across the farmyard towards the stables, felt that a black 
cloud had suddenly fallen upon his horizon. The mention 
of Chris filled him with poignant mistrust, with cruel 
alarm. He felt that calamity was hanging over them all, 
and that the terrible look he had seen in Claire’s eyes was 
prophetic of coming evil. He hardly saw the mare of 


THE DELUGE. 


115 


which Theodore was so proud ; hardly heard the babble, 
airily ostentatious, cheerily condescending, which Claire’s 
father dinned into his dull ears. He was filled with one 
thought. These new extravagances of Theodore’s, the 
look in Claire’s face, were all connected with Chris, and 
with his renewed visits. Bram felt as if he should go 
mad. 

When he reached the office he watched for an oppor- 
tunity to get speech alone with Christian. But he was 
unsuccessful. Bram did not even see him until late in 
the day. 

Long before that Bram had had an interview with the 
elder Mr. Cornthwaite, which only confirmed his fears. 
He had to give an account to the head of the firm of the 
business he had transacted while away. He had carried 
it through with great ability, and Mr. Cornthwaite com- 
plimented him highly upon the promptitude, judgment, 
and energy he had shown in a rather difficult matter. 

“ My son Christian was perfectly right,” Mr. Corn- 
thwaite went on, in recommending me to send you away on 
this affair, Elshaw. You seem to have an old head upon 
young shoulders. I only hope he may do half as well on 
the mission with which he himself is to be entrusted.” 

Bram looked curious. 

“Is Mr. Christian going away again so soon, sir?” 
asked he. 

Mr. Cornthwaite, whose face bore traces of some unac- 
customed anxiety, frowned. 

“ Yes,” he answered shortly. “ I am sorry to say that 
he and his wife don’t yet rub on so well as one could wish 
together. You see I tell you frankly what the matter is, 
and you can take what credit you please to yourself for 
having predicted it. No doubt they will shake down in 
time, but on all accounts I think it is as well, as there 
happens to be some business to be done down south, to 
send him away upon it. He will only be absent a few 
weeks, and in the meantime any little irritation there may 
be on both sides will have had time to rub off.” 

Bram looked blank indeed. 


110 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


He was more anxious than ever for a few words alone 
with Chris, but he was unable to obtain them. When his 
employer’s son appeared at the office, which was not till 
late in the day, he carefully avoided the opportunity Bram 
sought. After shaking hands with him with a dash 
and an effusion which made it impossible for the other to 
draw back, even if he had been so inclined, Chris, with 
a promise of “ seeing him presently,” went straight into 
his father’s private office, and did not reappear in the 
clerks’ office at all. 

In spite of the boisterous warmth of his greeting, Bram 
had noticed in Christian two things. The first was a 
certain underlying coldness and reserve, which put off, 
under an assumption of affectionate familiarity, the con- 
fidences which had been the rule between them. The 
other was the fact that Christian looked thin and worried. 

Bram lingered about the office till long after his usual 
hour of leaving in the hope of catching Christian. And 
it was at last only by chance that he learnt that Chris 
had gone some two hours before, and, further, that he was 
to start for London that very evening. 

Now, this discovery worried Bram, and set him think- 
ing. The intercourse between him and Christian had 
been of so familiar a kind that this abrupt departure, with- 
out any sort of leave-taking, could only be the result of 
some great change in Christian’s feeling towards him- 
self. So strong, although vague, were his fears that Bram 
when he left the office went straight to the new house in 
a pretty suburb some distance out of Sheffield, where 
Christian had settled with his bride. Here, however, he 
was met with the information that Mr. Christian had 
already started on his journey, and that he had gone, not 
from his own, but from his father’s house. 

As Bram left the house he saw the face of young Mrs. 
Christian Cornthwaite at one of the windows. She looked 
pale, drawn, unhappy, and seemed altogether to have lost 
the smug look of self-satisfaction which he had disliked in 
her face on his first meeting with her. 

Much disturbed, Bram went away, and returned to his 


THE DELUGE. 


117 


lodging, passing by the farm, where there was no sign of 
life to induce him to pause. It was nine o’clock, and as 
there was no light in any of the windows, he concluded 
that Mr. Biron had gone to bed, tired out with his day’s 
hunting, and that Claire had followed his example. 

He felt so restless, so uneasy, however, that instead of 
passing on he lingered about, walking up and down, 
watching the blank, dark windows, almost praying for a 
flicker of light in any one of them for a sign of the life 
inside. 

After an hour of this unprofitable occupation, he took 
himself to task for his folly, and went home to bed. 

On the following morning, before he was up, there was 
a loud knocking at the outer door of the cottage where he 
lived. Bram, with a sense of something wrong, some- 
thing which concerned himself, ran down himself to 
open it. 

In the middle of the little path stood Theodore Biron, 
with the same clothes that he had worn on the morning 
of the previous day, but without the hunting-crop. 

He was white, with livid lips, and his limbs trembled. 

“ What’s the matter ? ” asked Bram in a muffled voice. 

“ Claire, my daughter Claire ! ” stammered Theodore in 
a voice which sounded shrill with real feeling. All the 
jauntiness, all the vivacity, had gone out of him. He 
shivered with something which was keener than cold. 

“ Well ? ” said Bram, with a horrible chill at his heart. 

“ She’s — she’s gone, gone ! ” said Theodore, reeling back 
against the fence of the little garden. She’s run away. 
She’s run right away. She’s left me, left her poor old 
father ! Don’t you understand ? She is gone, man, gone ! ” 

And Mr. Biron, for once roused to genuine emotion, 
broke into sobs. 

Bram stood like a stone. 


118 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


CHAPTER XV. 

PAEENT AND LOVER. 

For some minutes after he had made the announcement 
of his daughter’s flight Mr. Biron gave himself up openly 
and without restraint to the expression of a sorrow which, 
while it might be selflsh, was certainly profound. 

“ My daughter ! My daughter ! ” he sobbed. “ My 
little Claire! My little, bright-faced darling! Oh, I 
can’t believe it ! It must be a dream, a nightmare ! Do 
you think, Elshaw,” and he suddenly drew himself up, 
with a quick change to bright hope, in the midst of his 
distress, “ that she can have gone up to the Park to stay 
at her uncle’s for the night ? ” 

But Bram shook his head. 

“ I don’t think it’s likely,” he said in a hollow voice. 
“ They were none so kind to her that she should do that.” 
A pause. “ When did you miss her ? ” 

“ This morning when I got back,” replied Theodore, 
who looked blue with cold and misery. “ I went out 
with the hounds yesterday as you know. And we got 
such a long way out that I couldn’t get back, and I put 
up at an inn for the night. Don’t you think,” and again 
his face brightened with one of those volatile changes 
from misery to hope which made him seem so womanish, 
“ that she may have been afraid to spend a night in the 
house by herself, and that she may have gone down to 
Joan’s place to sleep? I’ll go there and see. Will you 
come? Yes, yes, you’d better come. I don’t care for 
Joan ; she’s a rough, unfeeling sort of person. I should 
like you to come with me.” 

“ I’ll come — in a minute,” said Bram shortly. 

He knew very well that there was nothing in Mr. Biron’s 
idea. He spoke as if this were the first time that Claire 


PARENT AND LOVER. 


119 


had been left to spend the night alone in the farmhouse ; 
but, as a matter of fact, Bram knew very well that it had 
been Theodore’s frequent custom to spend the night 
away from home, and that his daughter was too much 
used to his vagaries to trouble herself seriously about 
his absence. 

He went upstairs, finished dressing, came out of the 
house, and rejoined Mr. Biron ; and that gentleman noticed 
no change in him, thought, indeed, that he was taking 
the matter with heartless coolness. Certainly, if be- 
havior which contrasted strongly with that of the injured 
father gave proof of heartlessness, then Bram was a very 
stone. 

All the way down the hill Mr. Biron lamented and 
moaned, sobbed, and even snivelled, loudly cursed the 
wretches at Holme Park who had made an outcast of his 
daughter, and, above all, Chris himself, who had stolen 
and ruined his daughter. 

But Bram cut him short. 

“ Hush, Mr. Biron,” said he sternly. “ Don’t say words 
like that till you are sure. For her sake hold your 
tongue. It’s not for you to cast the first stone at her, or 
even at him.” 

Even in his most sincere grief Mr. Biron resented being 
taken to task like this ; and by Bram, of all people, whom 
he secretly disliked, as well as feared, although the young 
man’s strong character attracted him instinctively when 
he was in want of help. He drew himself up with all 
his old airy arrogance. 

“Do you think I would doubt her for a single moment 
if I were not cruelly sure ? ” cried he indignantly. “ My 
own child, my own darling little Claire ! But I under- 
stand it all now. I see how thoroughly I was deceived 
in Chris. But he shall smart for it! I’ll thrash him 
within an inch of his life ! I won’t leave a whole bone in 
his body ! I’ll strangle him ! I’ll tear him limb from 
limb ! ” 

And ]\rr. Biron made a gesture more violent with every 
threat, until at last it seemed as if his frantic gesticula- 


120 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


tions must dislocate the bones in his own slim and fragile 
little body. 

As for Bram, he seemed to be past the stage of acute 
feeling of any sort. He was benumbed with the great 
blow that had fallen upon him ; overwhelmed, in spite of 
the foreshadowings which had of late broken his peace. 
With the fall of his ideal there seemed to have crumbled, 
away all that was best in his life, leaving only a cold 
automaton to do his daily work of head and hand. lie 
was astonished himself, if the pale feeling could be 
called astonishment, to find that he could laugh at the 
antics of his companion; not openly, of course, but 
with secret and bitter gibes at the careless, selfish father, 
and the frantic gestures by which he sought to impress 
his companion. 

When Theodore’s energies were exhausted they walked 
on in silence. And then Theodore felt hurt at Brain’s 
blunt, stolid apathy. 

“ I thought I should find you more sympathetic, 
Elshaw,” he said in an offended tone. “ You always pre- 
tended to think so much of my daughter ! ” 

“It wasn’t pretence,” said Bram shortly. “But I’m 
thinking, Mr. Biron, though I don’t like to say it now, that 
she must have been very unhappy before she went away 
like that.” 

Quite suddenly his voice broke. Mr. Biron, surprised 
in the midst of his theatrical display of emotion into a 
momentary pang of real compunction and of real remorse, 
was for a few moments entirely silent. Then he said in a 
quiet voice, more dignified and more touching than any 
of his loud outbursts — 

“ It’s true, I’ve not been a good father to her. But 
she was such a good girl — I never guessed it would come 
to this.” 

Bram said nothing. He felt as hard as nails. Theodore 
was really suffering now ; but it served him right. What 
had the poor little creature’s life been but a long and 
terrible struggle between temptation on the one side, 
worry and difficulty on the other ? She had held out 


PARENT AND LOVER. 


121 


long and bravely. She had struggled with a bright face, 
bearing her father’s burdens for him, and her own as well. 
What wonder that human nature had been too weak to 
hold out forever? 

Brain’s heart was like a great open sore. He dared not 
look within himself, he dared not think, he dared not even 
feel. lie tried to stupefy himself to the work of the 
moment, to stifle all sense but that of sight, and to fix his 
eyes upon Joan’s cottage, which they were now approach- 
ing, as if upon the mere reaching of it all his hopes de- 
pended. 

But if Theodore had found Bram unsympathetic, what 
must he have thought of Joan? She heard his inquiries 
with coldness, and after saying that Claire had not been 
with her since she left the farmhouse on the previous 
evening, she asked shortly whether she had gone away. 

“ I — I am afraid so. Oh, my child, my poor child ! ” cried 
Theodore. 

Joan grew very red, and clapping her hands on her hips, 
nodded with compressed lips. 

“ You’ve got no one but yourself to thank for this, Mr. 
Biron,” she said. “ T’ poor young lady’s had a cruel time 
these many months through yer wicked ways ! God help 
her, poor little lady ! ” 

And the good woman turned sharply away from him, 
and slamming the door in his face, disappeared, sobbing 
bitterly. 

Theodore was very white ; he trembled from head to 
foot, and was even for a little while too angry and too 
much perturbed to speak. 

At last, when Brara had put a hand within his arm to 
lead him away, he stammered out — 

“You heard that, Elshaw! You heard the woman! 

That’s what these North country are like ; 

they haven’t a scrap of feeling, even for the sacred grief 

of a father ! But I don’t care a hang for the whole 

lot of them ! I’ll go up to the Park, and I’ll tell Mr Corn- 
thwaite, the purse-proud old humbug, who thinks money 
can buy anything — I’ll tell him what I think of him and 


122 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


his scoundrel of a son ! And then I’ll go up to town, and 
I’ll find him out, I’ll hunt out Christian himself, and I’ll 
avenge my child.” 

Bram said nothing. 

“ And I’ll make him provide for her. I’ll bring out an 
action against him, and make him shell out, him and his 
skinfiint of a father. Chris is nothing but a chip of the 
old block, and I’ll make them suffer together, in the only 
way they can suffer — through the money-bags.” 

Bram was disgusted, sickened. He scented through 
this new turn of Mr. Biron’s thoughts that feeling for the 
main chance which was such a prominent feature of 
that gentleman’s character. And quite unexpectedly he 
stopped short, and said bluntly — 

“ That may comfort you, Mr. Biron, but it will never do 
aught for her ! If — if,” he had to clear his throat to make 
himself heard at all, “ if she — comes back, she’ll never 
touch their money ! Poor, poor child ! ” 

“You think she’ll come back ? ” asked Theodore almost 
wistfully. 

But Bram could not answer. He did not know what to 
think, what to wish. He shrugged his shoulders without 
speaking, and with a gesture of abrupt farewell turned 
from his companion, who had now nearly reached his 
own door, and walked rapidly back in the direction of his 
lodging. 

He could not bear to come near the farm, the place 
which had been hallowed in his eyes by thoughts of her 
who had been his idol. 

Theodore called out to him. 

“You’ll give me a look in to-night, won’t you, when 
you come back from the office ? Think how lonely I shall 
be.” 

Bram, without turning round, made a gesture of assent. 
He felt with surprise to himself that he was half-drawn 
to this contemptible creature by the fact that, underneath 
all his theatrical demonstrations of regret and grief, there 
was some very strong and genuine feeling. It was chiefiy 
^ selfish feeling, as Brani knew ; indeed, a resentful feel- 


PARENT AND LOVER. 


123 


ing, that Claire had treated him shabbily and ungratefully 
in leaving him to shift for himself without any warning, 
after so many years of patient slavery, of tender care for 
him. 

But still Bram felt that he had at last some emotion in 
common with this man, whom he had so far only despised. 
Theodore even felt the disgrace, the moral shame of this 
awful disaster to his daughter more keenly than any one 
would have given him credit for. 

As for Bram himself, he went home, he ate his break- 
fast, he started for the town almost in his usual manner. 
No one who passed him detected any sign in his look or 
in his manner of the blow which had fallen upon him. 
But, for all that, he was suffering so keenl}^, so bitterly, 
that the very intensity of his pain had a numbing effect, 
reducing him to the level of a brute which can see, and 
hear, and taste, and smell, but in which all sense of any- 
thing higher is dead and cold. 

It was not until he had nearly passed the garden of the 
farm, keeping his eyes carefully turned in the opposite 
direction, that a bend in the road caught his eye, where 
not many evenings before he had seen Claire standing with 
a letter in her hand, waiting for some one to pass who 
would take it to the post for her. 

And his face twitched ; from between his closed teeth 
there came a sort of strangled sob, the sound which in 
Theodore had roused his contempt. He remembered the 
smile which had come into her eyes when he came by, 
the word of thanks with which she had slipped the letter 
into his hand, and run indoors. He remembered that a 
scent of lavender had come to him as she passed, that he 
had felt a thrill at the sound, the sight of her flying skirts 
as she fled into the house. 

Oh ! it was not possible that she could have done this 
thing, she who was so proud, so pure, so tender to her 
friends ! 

And Bram stopped in the middle of the road, with an 
upward bound of the heart, and told himself that the thing 
was a lie. 


124 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


What a base wretch he was to have harbored such a 
thought of her ! She was gone ; but what proof had they 
but their own mean and base suspicions that she had not 
gone alone ? 

And Bram by a strong effort threw off the dark cloud 
which was pressing down upon his soul, or at least lifted 
one corner of it, and strode down towards the office re- 
solved to trust, to hope, in spite of everything. 

At the office everything was reassuringly normal in 
the daily routine. And, by a great and unceasing effort, 
Bram had really got himself to hold his opinions on the 
one great subject in suspense, when a carriage drove up 
to the door, and a few minutes later young Mrs. Christian, 
with a face which betrayed that she was suffering from 
acute distress, came into the office. 

As soon as she saw Bram, she stopped on her way 
through. 

“ No,” she said quickly to the clerk who was leading 
her through to the private office of Mr. Cornthwaite, 
“ it is Mr. Elshaw I want to see. Please, can I speak to 
you?” 

Bram felt the heavy weight settling at once on his 
heart again. He followed her in silence into the office. 
Mr. Cornthwaite had not yet arrived. 

As soon as the door was shut, and they were alone, 
she broke out in a tremulous voice, not free from pettish- 
ness — 

“ Mr. Elshaw, I wanted to see you because I feel sure 
you will not deceive me. And all the rest try to. Mr. 
and Mrs. Cornthwaite, and my sister-in-law, and my own 
people, and everybody. You live near Duke’s Farm? 
Tell me, is Miss Claire Biron at home with her father, 
or — or has she gone away ? ” 

“I believe, Mrs. Christian, she has gone away.” 

The young wife did not cry ; she frowned. 

“ I knew it ! ” she said sharply. “ They pretended they 
did not know; but I knew it, I felt sure of it. Mr. 
Elshaw, she has gone away with my husband ! ” 

“ Oh, but how can you be sure ? How 


PARENT AND LOVER. 


125 


“ Mr. Elshaw, don’t trifle with me. You know the truth 
as well as I do. Not one day has passed since our mar- 
riage without Christian’s flaunting this girl and her per- 
fections in my face ; not one day has passed since our re- 
turn from abroad without his either seeing her or making 
an effort to see her. Oh, I daresay you will say it was 
mean ; but I have had him watched, and he has been at 
the farm at Hessel every day ! ” 

“ But what of that ? He is her cousin, you know. He 
has always been used to see a great deal of her and of 
her father.” 

“ Oh, I know all about her father ! ” snapped Minnie. 
“ And I know how likely any of the family are to go out 
to Hessel to see him ! Don’t prevaricate, Mr. Elshaw. 
I had understood you never did anything of the kind. 
Can you pretend to doubt that they have gone away 
together ? ” 

Brain was silent. He hung his head as if he had been 
the guilty person. 

“ Of course, you cannot,” went on the lady triumphantly. 
“ Where has she got to go to ? What friends has she to 
stay with ? Who would she leave her father for except 
Christian ? It seems she has never had the decency to 
hide that she was fond of him ! ” 

“Don’t say that,” protested Bram gently. “Why 
should she hide it in the old days before he was 
married ? There was no reason why she should. They 
were cousins ; they were believed to be engaged. They 
would have been married if Mr. Cornthwaite had allowed 
it. Didn’t you know that ? ” 

“ Not in the way I’ve known it since, of course,” said 
Minnie bitterly. “ Everything was kept from me. I heard 
of a boy-and-girl affection; that was all. The whole 
family are deceitful and untrustworthy. And Christian 
is the worst of them all. He doesn’t care for me a bit ; 
he never, never did ! ” 

And here at last she broke down, and began to cry 
piteously. 

* Bram, usually so tender-hearted, felt as if his heart 


126 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


was scorched up within him. He looked at her ; he tried 
to speak kindly, tried to say reassuring things, to express 
a doubt, a hope, which he did not feel. 

But she stopped him imperiously, snappishly. 

“ Don’t talk nonsense, Mr. Elshaw, please. And don’t 
say you are sorry. For I know you are sorry for nobody 
but her. Miss Biron is one of those persons who attract 
sympathy ; I am not. But you can spare yourself the 
trouble of pretending.” She drew herself up, and hastily 
wiped her eyes. “ I know what to do. I shall go back 
to my father’s house, and I shall have nothing more to do 
with him. I am not going to break my heart over an 
unprincipled man, or over a creature like this Claire 
Biron.” 

Brain offered no remonstrance. He knew that he ought 
to be sorry for this poor little woman, whose only and 
most venial fault had been a conviction that she pos- 
sessed the power to “ reform ” the man she married. Un- 
happily, it was true, as she said, that she was not one 
of those persons who attract sympathy. Her hard, dry, 
snappish manner, the shrewish light in her blue eyes, re- 
pelled him as they had repelled Christian himself. And 
Brain, though far from excusing or forgiving Christian, 
felt that he understood how impossible it would have 
been for a man of his easy, genial temperament to be even 
fairly, conventionally happy with a nature so antipathetic 
to his own. 

In silence, in sorrow, he withdrew, with an added burden 
to bear, the burden of what was near to absolute certainty, 
of extinguished hope. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

THE PANGS OF DESPISED LOVE. 

The farmhouse looked desolate in the dusk of the 
November evening when Bram, in fulfilment of his promise 
to Theodore, crossed the farmyard to the back door and 
tapped at it lightly. 


THE PANGS OF DESPISED LOVE. 127 

It was opened by Joan, who looked as if she had been 
interrupted in the middle of “ a good cry.” 

“ Ay, coom in, sir,” said she, “ coom in. But youTl find 
no company here now.” 

“ Isn’t Mr. Biron back yet ? ” 

“ No, sir,” she answered with a sudden change to ag- 
gressive sullenness, “ and he’s welcome to stay away, he 
is ! If it hadn’t been for that miserable auld rascal, poor 
Miss Claire ’ud never been took away from us. Ah 
wouldn’t have on my conscience what yon chap has, no, 
not for a kingdom.” 

Bram, sombre and stern, sat down by the fire, staring 
at the little wooden stool on which he had so often seen 
Claire sitting in the opposite corner, with her sewing in 
her hand. The big chimney-corner which they had both 
loved — how bare it looked without her ! Joan, alone of 
all the people he had met that day, seemed to understand 
what had taken place in him, to realize the sudden death, 
the total, irremediable decay, of what had been the joy 
of his life. She put down the plate she had been wiping, 
and she came over to look at him in the firelight. There 
was no other light in the room. 

“ Poor lad ! Poor chap ! ” she murmured in accents so 
tender, so motherly, that her rough voice sounded like 
most sweet, most touching music in his dull ears. 

For the first time since the horrible shock he had re- 
ceived that morning his features quivered, became con- 
vulsed, and a look of desperate anguish came into his 
calm gray eyes. 

Her strong right hand came down upon his shoulder 
with a blow which was meant to be inspiriting in its 
violent energy. 

« Well, lad, ye must bear oop ; ye must forget her ! 
Ay, there’s no two ways about it. It’s a sad busi- 
ness, an’ Ah’m broken oop abaht it mysen, but she’s 
chosen to go, an’ there’s no help for it, an’ no grieving can 
mend it ! It was only you, an’ her liking for you, that 
stopped her from going before, I reckon. Look at yon 
auld spend-t’-brass and the life she’s led wi’ him, always 


128 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


having to beg, beg, beg for him from folks as didn’t pity 
her as they should ! ” 

Bram moved impatiently. 

“ Yes, that’s what I cannot forgive him ! ” growled he. 

Joan stared at him in the dusk. 

“ Have you heard,” said she, peering mysteriously into 
his face, “ if anything ’as happened while you were away ? ” 

Bram shook his head. 

“Well, suramat did happen. Mr. Biron got money 
from some one, an’ began to spend it loike one o’clock. 
You must have heard o’ that?” 

Bram nodded, remembering the new hunter and Theo- 
dore’s smart appearance. 

“Well,” went on Joan, leaning forward, and dropping 
her voice, “it was sum mat to do wi’ that as broke oop 
poor Miss Claire. Ay, lad, don’t shiver an’ start ; it’s best 
you should know all, and forget all if you can. Well, it 
was after that, after t’ auld man had gotten t’ brass, that 
I saw a change coom over her. She went abaht loike one 
as warn’t right, an’ she says to ’im one day — Ah were 
in t’ kitchen yonder an’ Ah heard her — ‘ Papa,’ says she, 
‘ Ah can never look Bram Elshaw in t’ face again.’ That’s 
what she said, my lad ; Ah heard her.” 

Bram got up, and began to pace up and down the tiled 
floor without a word. Joan went on, quickening her pace, 
a little anxious to get the story over and done with. 

“You know his way. But there was summat in her 
voice told me it were no laughin’ matter wi’ her. 
An’,” went on the good woman in a voice lower still, 
“ when Mr. Christian coom that evening, says she, says 
Miss Claire — ‘ Ah mun see ’im to-neght.’ An’ he came in, 
an’ they went in through to the best parlor, and they had 
a long talk together. That were t’ day before yesterday. 
She must have gone last neght, as soon as Ah left t’ 
house.” 

Still Bram said nothing, pacing up and down, up and 
down, on the red tiles which he had trodden so often 
with something like ecstasy in his heart. 

Joan was shrewd enough and sympathetic enough to 


THE PANGS OF DESPISED LOVE. 


129 


understand why he did not speak. She finished her 
plate-washing, disappeared silently into the outhouse, and 
presently returned with her bonnet on. 

“Are ye going to stay here, sir?” she asked, as she 
laid her hands on the door to go out. 

“ Yes ; I promised I’d look in.” 

“Friendly loike? You aren’t going for to do him any 
hurt?” 

“ No, oh, no.” 

“ Well,” said Joan, as she turned the handle and took 
her portly person slowly round the door, “ if so be you 
had, you might ha’ done it an’ welcome ! Ah wouldn’t 
have stopped ye. Good-neght, sir.” 

“ Good-night, Joan.” 

She went out, and Bram was left alone. The sound of 
her footsteps died away, until he felt as if he was the only 
living thing about the farm. Even the noises that usually 
came across from the sheds and the stables where the 
animals were kept seemed to be hushed that evening. 
No sound reached his ears but the moaning of the rising 
wind, and the scratching of the mice in the old wain- 
scotting. 

Never before had he felt so utterly, hopelessly miser- 
able and castdown. In the old days, when he had lived 
one of a wretched, poverty-stricken family in a squalid 
mean way, ill-kept, half-starved, he had had his day- 
dreams, his vague ambitions, to gild the sorry present. 
Now, on the very high-road to the fulfilment of those am- 
bitions, he was suddenly left without a ray of hope, with- 
out a rag of comfort, to bear the most unutterable 
wretchedness, that of shattered ideals. 

Not Claire alone, but Chris also had fallen from the 
place each had held in his imagination, in his heart, and 
Bram, who hid a spirit- world of his own under a matter-of- 
fact manner and a blunt directness of speech, suffered 
untold anguish. 

While he watched the embers of the fire in profound 
melancholy, with his hands on his * knees, and his eyes 
staring dully into the red heart of the dying fire, he heard 

9 


130 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


something moving outside. He raised his head, expecting 
to hear the sound of Mr. Biron’s voice. 

But a shadow passed before the window in the faint 
daylight that was left ; and with a wild hope Bram sat 
up, his heart seeming to cease to beat. 

The shadow, the step were those of a woman. 

The next moment the door was softly, stealthily opened, 
and away like a dream went joy and hope again. 

The woman was not Claire. 

He could see that the visitor was tall, broad-shouldered, 
of well-developed figure, and that she was of the class 
that wear shawls round their heads, and clogs on their 
feet in the daytime. 

She stood in the room, just inside the door, and seemed 
to listen. Then she said in a voice which was coarse and 
uncultivated, but which was purposely subdued to a pitch 
of insincere civility, as Bram instantly felt sure — 

“ Miss Biron ! Is Miss Claire Biron here ? ” 

Now, Bram had never, as far as he knew, met this girl 
before ; he did not even know her name. But, with his 
sense of hearing made sharper, perhaps, by the dark- 
ness, he guessed at once something which was very near 
the truth. He knew that this woman came with hostile 
intent of some kind or other. 

He at once rose from his seat, and said — “ No ; Miss 
Biron is not in.” 

And he put his hand up to the high chimney-piece, 
found a box of matches, and lit a candle which was beside 
it. Meanwhile the visitor stood motionless, and was so 
standing when the light had grown bright enough for him 
to see her by. She was a handsome girl, black-haired, 
blacked-eyed, with cheeks which ought to have been red, 
but which were now pale and thin, showing a sharp out- 
line of rather high cheek-bone and big jaw. Bram rec- 
ognized her as a girl whom he had often seen about 
Hessel, and who lived at a little farm about a mile and a 
half away. Her name was Meg Tyzack. She was neatly 
dressed, without any of the fiaunting, shabby finery which 
the factory girls usually affect when they leave their shawl 


THE PANGS OF DESPISED LOVE. 


131 


and clogs. Her lips were tightly closed, and in her eyes 
there was an expression of ferocious sullenness which 
confirmed the idea Bram had conceived at the first sound 
of her voice. Her black cloth jacket was buttoned only 
at the throat, and her right hand was thrust underneath 
it as if she was hiding something. 

“ Hot in, eh ? ” she asked scoffingly, as she measured 
Bram from head to foot with a look of ineffable scorn. 
Then, with a sudden, sharp change of tone to one of pas- 
sionate anxiety, she asked, “ Where’s she gone to then ? ” 

Bram hesitated. This woman’s appearance at the farm, 
her look, her manner, betrayed to him within a few seconds 
a fact he had not guessed before, though now a dozen 
circumstances fiashed into his mind to confirm it. This 
was one of the many girls with whom Chris had had 
relations of a more or less questionable character. Bram 
had seen her with him in the lane leading to her home, 
and on the hill above Holme Park ; had seen her waiting 
about in the town near the works. But to see Chris 
talking to a good-looking girl was too common a thing for 
Bram to have given this particular young woman much 
attention. Now, however, he divined in an instant that 
it was jealousy which had brought her to the farmhouse, 
and a feeling of sickening repulsion came over him at the 
thought of the words which he might have to hear directed 
by this virago at Claire. If the idol was broken, it was 
an idol still. 

As he did not reply at once, Meg Tyzack stepped quickly 
across the floor, and glared into his eyes with a look 
terrible in its fierce eagerness, its deadly anxiety. 

“Where has she gone? Ye can’t keep t’ truth from 
me.” Then, as he was still silent, she burst out with an 
overwhelming torrent of passion. “ Ah know what they 
say ! Ah know they say he’s taken her away wi’ him, Mr. 
Christian of t’ works, Cornthwaite’s works. But it’s a 
lie. Ah know it’s a lie. He’d never take her wi’ him ; 
he’d never dare take any one but me. He care for her? 
Not enoof for that ! She’s here. Ah know she is ; only 
she’s afraid to coom out, afraid to meet me ! But Ah’ll 


132 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


find her; Ah’ll have her aht. What ’ud you be doin’ 
here if she wasn’t here? Oh, Ah know who Christian 
was jealous of ; Ah know she was artful enough to keep 
the two of ye on. Ah know it was her fault he used to 

cooin here and ” Her eyes flashed, and her voice 

suddenly dropped to a fierce whisper. “Ah mean to 
have her aht.” 

As she suddenly swung round and made for the inner 
door leading into the hall, Bram saw that she held under 
her jacket a bottle. There was mischief in the woman’s 
eyes, worse mischief even than was boded by her tongue. 
For one moment, as he sprang after her, Bram felt glad 
that Claire was not there. Meg laughed hoarsely in his 
face as she eluded him, and disappeared into the hall, 
slamming the door. 

Bram did not follow her. Claire being gone, she could 
do little harm. He opened the outer door, and went out 
into the farmyard. In a few minutes he saw a light 
flickering in room after room upstairs. Meg Tyzack was 
searching, hunting in every nook and every corner, 
searching for her rival with savage, despairing eagerness. 
Bram shivered. It was a relief to him when he heard foot- 
steps approaching the farm, and a few moments later the 
voice of Theodore calling to him. 

“ Yes, Mr. Biron, it’s me.” 

“ Then who’s that in the house ? Is it Joan ? ” asked 
Theodore fretfully, testily. 

He was dispirited, dejected; evidently he had met with 
neither comfort nor sympathy at Holme Park. He had 
been trying to comfort himself on the way back, as Bram 
discovered by his unsteady gait and husky utterance. 

“ It’s a girl, Meg Tyzack,” answered Bram. 

Mr. Biron started. 

“ That vixen ! ” cried he. “ That horrible virago ! Why 
did you let her get in ? ” 

“ I couldn’t help it,” replied Bram simply. 

“ What is she up to ? ” 

“ She’s looking for Miss Claire,” said Bram in a low 
voice. 


THE PANGS OF DESPISED LOVE. 133 

Theodore made no answer. But he shuddered, and lean- 
ing against the wall of the farmyard began to cry. 

“ Come, Mr. Biron,” said Bram impatiently, “ it’s no 
use giving way like that. It’s just something to be 
thankful for that this mad woman can’t get hold of her.” 

Mr. Biron did not answer. A moment later, attracted 
probably by the voices, Meg came rushing out of the 
house like a fury, and made straight for the two men. 

“ Ah ! ” cried she shrilly, when she made out who the 
newcomer was, thrusting her angry face close to his 
in the gloom. “So it’s you, is it? You, the father of 
that ” 

“ Hold your tongue.” 

“ Hush ! ” cried Bram, seizing her arm. 

There was a sound so impressive in his voice, short and 
blunt as his speech was, that the woman turned upon 
him sharply, but for a moment was silent. Then she 
said with coarse bravado — 

“ And who are you to talk to me ? Why, t’ very mon 
as ought to take my part, if you had any spirit ? But you 
leave it to me to pay out t’ pair on ’em. An’ Ah’ll do it. 
Ah’ll made ’em both smart for it, if Ah swing for it ! 
Ah’ll show him the price he has to pay for treatin’ a 
woman like me the way he’s done. When Ah loved him 
so ! Ay, ten times more’n than that little hussy could ! 
Oh, my God, my God ! ” 

Bram, child of the people that he was, was moved in 
the utmost depths of his heart by the woman’s mad, 
passionate despair. He felt for her as he could never feel 
for the cool, prim, little wife Christian had served so ill. 
He would have comforted her if he could. But as no 
words strong enough or suitable enough to the occasion 
came to his lips, he just put a gentle hand upon the 
woman’s shoulder as she bowed herself down and sobbed. 

But Mr. Biron’s refinement was shocked by this scene. 
Seeing the woman less ferocious, now that she was more 
absorbed in her grief, he ventured to come a little nearer, 
and to say snappishly — 

“ But, my good woman, though we may be sorry for 


134 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


you, you have no right to force yourself into my house. 
Nor have you any right to speak in such terms of my 
daughter.” 

Meg was erect in a moment, her eyes flashing, her 
nostrils quivering. With a wild, ironical laugh, she 
faced about, pointing at his mean little face a scornful 
finger. 

“You!” cried she in a very passion of contempt. 
“ You dare to speak to me ! You as would have sold your 
daughter a dozen times over if t’ price had been good 
enoof ! Why, mon, your hussy of a daughter’s a pearl to 
you! You’re a rat, a cur ! Ah could almost forgive her 
when Ah look at you ! It’s you Ah’ve got to blame for it 
all, wi’ your black heart an’ your mean, white face ! You 
more’n her, more’n him ! ” 

With a sudden impulse of indomitable rage, she stepped 
back, and raising her right hand quickly, flung something 
at his face. 

Mr. Biron uttered a piercing shriek, as shrill as a 
woman’s. 

“ Fiend ! She-devil ! She’s killed me ! Help ! Oh, 
I’m on fire ! ” 

Bram, who hardly knew what had happened, caught 
Theodore as the latter fell shrieking into his arms. Meg, 
with a wild laugh, picked up the remains of her broken 
bottle, and ran out of the farmyard. 


CHAPTER XVH. 

BEAM SPEAKS HIS MIND. 

Meg Tyzack had hardly left the farmyard before Bram 
knew what she had done, and realized the full extent of 
the danger Claire had escaped. The bottle Meg had 
carried, and which she had thrown at the head of Theodore 
Biron, had contained vitriol. Luckily for Mr. Biron, he had 
moved aside just in time to escape having the bottle broken 



, With an impulse of indomitable rage she stepped back and flung some- 
thing in his face. 


—Page 134 





i 


BEAM SPEAKS HIS MIND. 


135 


on his face, but part of the contents had fallen on his head, 
on the side of his face, and on his left hand before the 
bottle itself was dashed into two pieces as it fell on the 
ground. 

Bram wiped Theodore’s face and hands as quickly as 
he could, but the effeminate man had so entirely lost his 
self-control that he could not keep still ; and by his own 
restlessness he hindered the full effect of Bram’s good 
offices. 

The young man saw that his best chance with the 
hysterical creature was to get him into the house as quickly 
as he could. But Theodore objected to this. He wanted 
Bram to go in pursuit of the woman, to bring her back, 
to have her taken up. And as his cries had by this time 
caused a little crowd to assemble from the cottages round 
about, he began to harangue them on the subject of his 
wrongs, and to try to stir them up to resent the outrage 
to which he had been subjected. 

It is needless to say that his efforts were ineffectual. 
Mr. Biron had succeeded in establishing a thoroughly bad 
reputation among his neighbors, who knew all about his 
selfish treatment of his daughter. He found not one 
sympathizer, and at last he was fain to allow himself to 
be led indoors by Bram, who was very urgent in his per- 
suasions, being indeed afraid that Theodore’s curses upon 
the bystanders for their supineness would bring upon him 
some further chastisement. He prevailed upon a lad in 
the crowd to go for a doctor, assuring him that it was the 
pain from which the gentleman was suffering that made 
him so irritable. 

Once inside the house, Bram found that his difficulties 
with his unsympathetic patient had only just begun. 
Mr. Biron was not used to pain, and had no idea of suffer- 
ing in silence. He raved and he moaned, he cursed and 
he swore, and Bram was amazed and disgusted to find 
that this little, well-preserved, middle-aged gentleman 
was quite as much concerned by the injury which he 
should suffer in appearance as by the pain he had to bear. 

“ Do you think, Elshaw, that the marks will ever go 


136 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


away ? Oh, good heavens, I know they won’t,” he cried, 
as with his uninjured eye he surveyed himself in the glass 
over the dining-room sideboard by the light of a couple of 
candles. “ Oh, oh, the wretch ! The hag ! I’ll get her 
six months for this ! ” 

And the little man, trembling with rage, shook his fist 
and gnashed his teeth, presenting in his anger and dis- 
figurement a hideous spectacle. 

The left side of his face was already one long patch of 
inflammation. His left eye was shut up ; the hair on that 
side of his head had already begun to come away in tufts 
from the burnt skin. 

Bram was disgusted. Mr. Biron’s grief over the loss of 
his daughter, keen as it had been, could not be compared 
to that which he felt now at the loss of his remaining 
good looks. There was a note of absolute sincerity in his 
every lament which had been conspicuously lacking in his 
grief of the morning. The young man could scarcely 
listen to him with patience. He tried, however, out of 
humanity, to remain silent, since he could give no comfort. 
But silence would not do for his garrulous companion, 
who insisted on having an answer. 

“ Do you think, Elshaw, that I shall be disfigured for 
life ? ” he asked witli tremulous anxiety. 

“ I’m afraid so,” answered Bram rather gruffly. “ But 
I don’t think I’d worry about that when you have worse 
things than that to trouble you.” 

Unluckily, Mr. Biron was so much absorbed in the loss 
of his own beauty that he fell into the mistake of being 
absolutely sincere for once. 

“Worse troubles than that! Worse than to go about 
like a scarecrow, a repulsive object, all the years of one’s 
life! What can be worse? ” groaned he. 

Bram, who was standing solemnly erect, answered at 
once, in a deep voice, out of the fulness of his heart — 

“ Well, Mr. Biron, if you don’t know of anything 
worse, I suppose there is nothing worse — for you ! ” 

But Mr. Biron was impervious to sneers. Fie walked 
up and down the room in feverish anxiety until the 


BEAM SPEAKS HIS MIND. 


137 


arrival of the doctor, whom he interrogated at once with 
as much solicitude as if he had been a young beauty on 
the eve of her first ball. 

The doctor, a stolid, hard-working country practitioner, 
with a dull red face and dull black eyes, showed Theodore 
much less mercy than Bram had done. He knew his 
patient well, having been called in to him on several oc- 
casions when that gentleman’s excesses had brought on 
the attacks of dyspepsia to which he was subject ; and 
the more he saw of him the less he liked him. Theodore’s 
anxiety about his appearance he treated with cruel blunt- 
ness. 

“ No, you’ll never be the same man again to look at, 
Mr. Biron,” he said quite cheerfully. “ And you may be 
thankful if we can save you the sight of the left eye.” 

“You think the scar will never go away? Nor the 
hair grow again ? ” asked Theodore piteously. 

“The scar won’t go away certainly. But that’s not 
much to trouble about at your time of life, I should think,” 
returned the doctor bluntly. “ There’s a greater danger 
than that to concern ourselves with. Unless you are 
very careful, you will have erysipelas. You must get 
that little daughter of yours to nurse you very carefully. 
Where is she ? ” 

Theodore burst out fretfully with a new grievance — 

“ My daughter ! She’s not here to nurse me. I’ve no 
one to nurse me now. She’s gone away, gone away and 
left me all by myself ! ” 

The doctor stared at him with the unpleasant fixity of 
eyes which have to look hard before they see much. 

“You told her to go, I suppose?” said he at last, 
abruptly. 

Taken by surprise, Theodore, to the horror of Bram, 
who was standing in the background, confessed — 

“ Well, I told her she could go if she liked; but I never 
meant her to take me at my word.” 

Bram was thunderstruck. Such a simple solution of 
the mystery of the disappearance of the dutiful daughter 
had never entered his mind. In a fit of passion, perhaps 


138 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


of partial intoxication, Theodore had bade his daughter 
get out of the house. And the long-suffering girl had 
taken him at his word. 

The doctor nodded. 

“ I thought so,” said he. “ I thought there was no end 
to what the child would put up with at your hands. So 
you have driven her away? Well, then you’ll have to 
suffer for it. I’m afraid. I don’t know of anybody else 
who would come to nurse you.” 

“ I’ll do what I can,” said Bram in a hollow voice from 
the background. 

It needed an effort on his part to make this offer. He 
felt that he loathed the little wretch who had himself 
driven his daughter into the arms of her untrustworthy 
lover. Only the thought that Claire would wish him to 
do so enabled him to undertake the distasteful task of 
ministering to such a patient. Theodore thanked him in 
a half-hearted sort of way, feeling that there was some- 
thing not altogether grateful to himself in the spirit in 
which this offer was made. The doctor was far more 
cordial. 

He told Bram he was doing a fine thing. 

“But then,” he added in his rough way, “fine things 
are what one expects of you, Mr. Elshaw.” 

And then he went out, leaving Theodore in much per- 
plexity as to what the fellow could see in Elshaw to make 
such a fuss about. 

Bram spent the night with him, doing his best to soothe 
and to comfort the unfortunate man, whose sufferings, 
both of mind and body, grew more acute as the hours 
wore on. His own worry about himself was the chief 
cause of this. Long before morning he had lost sight of 
the shame of his daughter’s flight, and looked upon it 
solely as a wicked freak which had resulted in his own 
most cruel misfortune. 

“Why, surely, man,” broke out Bram at last, losing 
patience at his long tirades of woe and indignation, “it’s 
better that you should be disfigured than her, at any rate.” 

“No, it isn’t,” retorted Theodore sharply. “Claire 


BEAM SPEAKS HIS MIND. 


139 


never cared half as much about her appearance as I did 
about mine. And, besides,” he went on, with a sudden 
feeling that he had got hold of a strong argument, “ if 
she had been disfigured, she would have had no temptation 
to do wrong ! ” 

Bram jumped up, clenching his fist. He could bear no 
more. With a few jerked-out words to the effect that he 
would send Joan to get his breakfast, he rushed out of the 
house. 

Poor Claire! Poor little Claire! Was this the crea- 
ture she had wronged in going away ? This shallow, self- 
ish wretch who had turned her out, and who regretted 
the ministrations of her gentle hands far more than he 
did the shame her desperate act had drawn down upon 
her! 

Bram went down to the works that morning a different 
man from what he had been the day before. He was 
waking from the dull lethargy of grief into which the 
first discovery of Claire’s flight had thrown him. A 
smouldering anger against the Cornthwaites, father and 
son, was taking the place of sullen misery in his breast. 
He had gathered from Theodore that the elder Mr. Corn- 
thwaite had taken his remonstrances not only coolly, 
but with something like relief, as if he felt glad of an ex- 
cuse for getting rid of the relations whose vicinity had 
been a continual annoyance. 

But Bram did not mean to be put off. Josiah, who had 
not been at the office at all on the previous day, should 
see him, and answer his questions. And Bram, maturing 
a grave resolution, strode down into the town with a 
steady look in his eyes. 

Mr. Cornthwaite saw him as soon as he himself arrived, 
and, evidently with the intention of taking the bull by the 
horns, spoke to him at once. 

“ Ah, Elshaw, good-morning. Come in here a moment, 
please. I want to speak to you.” 

Bram followed in silence, and stood within the room 
with his back to the door, with a stern expression on his 
pale face. 


140 


FOEGE AND FURNACE. 


Mr. Cornthwaite broached the unpleasant subject at 
once. 

“Nice business this, eh? Nice thing Chris has done 
for himself now ! Brought a hornet’s nest about his ears 
and mine too ! Old Hibbs and his wife have been down 
to my house blackguarding me ; Minnie herself is fit for 
a lunatic asylum, and, to complete the business, the girl’s 
rascally father has been to my house, trying to levy black- 
mail. But I’ve made up my mind to make short work of 
the thing ! I start for London to-night ; find out Master 
Chris (luckily he gave his address to no one but me, or 
he’d have had his wife’s family about his ears already), 
and bring the young man back to his wife’s feet — bring 
him by the scruff of the neck if necessary ! ” 

“ And — Claire — Miss Biron ? ” said Bram hoarsely. 

“ Oh, she must shift for herself. She knew what she 
was doing, running off with a married man. I’ve no pity 
for her ; not the least. I wash my hands of the pair of 
them, father and daughter, now. He must just pack up 
his traps and be off after her. What becomes of her is 
his affair, not ours ! ” 

“ Mr. Christian can’t get rid of the responsibility like 
that, sir,” said Bram, with a note of sombre warning in 
his voice. 

“ I take upon myself the responsibility for him,” re- 
torted Mr. Cornthwaite coldly. “My son is dependent 
upon me, and he can do nothing without my approval. 
I am certainly going to give him no help towards the 
maintenance of a baggage like that. You know what my 
opinion of her always has been. Circumstances have 
confirmed it most amply. A young man is not much to 
blame if he gets caught, entangled, by a girl as artful and 
as designing as she is.” 

“ I don’t think you will find yourself and Mr. Chris- 
tian in agreement upon that point, sir,” said Bram 
steadily. 

“ Well, whether he agrees or not, he’ll come back with 
me to-morrow,” replied Mr. Cornthwaite hotly. 

“ Then, Mr. Cornthwaite, you’ll please take my notice 


BEAM SPEAKS HIS MIND. 


141 


now, and I’ll be out of this to-day. For,” Bram went on, 
with a rising spot of deep color in his cheek, and a 
bright light in his eye, “ I couldn’t trust myself face to 

face with such a d d scoundrel as Mr. Christian is if he 

leaves the girl he loves, the girl he’s betrayed, and comes 
sneaking back at your heels like a cur, when he ought to 
stand up for the woman who loves him ! ” 

“ Upon my word, yours is very singular morality for 
a young man who goes in for such correctness of conduct 
as you do. Where does the wife come in, the poor, 
injured wife, in your new-fangled scheme of right and 
wrong ? Is she to be left out in the cold altogether ? ” 

“ Where else can she be left, poor thing?” cried Bram 
with deep feeling. “ Do you think if you brought Mr. 
Christian back ‘ by the scruff of the neck,’ as you say, 
that you’d ever be able to patch matters up between ’em 
so as to make ’em live anything but a cat-and’-dog’s-life? 
No, Mr. Cornthwaite, you couldn’t. The wife won’t come 
to so much hurt ; she wouldn’t have come to none if you 
hadn’t forced on this cursed marriage. Let her get free, 
and make him free ; and let Mr. Christian put the wrong 
right as far as he can by marrying the girl he wants, the 
girl who knows how to make him happy ! ” 

Mr. Cornthwaite’s black eyes blazed. He hated even 
a semblance of contradiction ; and Bram’s determined and 
dogged attitude irritated him beyond measure. He rose 
from his arm-chair, and clasping his hands behind his back 
with a loud snap, he assumed towards the young man an 
air of bland contempt which he had never used to him 
before. 

“ Your notions are charming in the abstract, Elshaw. 
I have no doubt, too, that there are some sections of 
society where your ideas might be carried out without 
much harm to anybody. But not in that in which we 
move. If my son were to commit such an unheard-of 
folly as you suggest I would let him shift for himself for 
the rest of his days. And perhaps you know enough of 
Christian to tell whether he would find life with any 
young woman agreeable under those conditions.” 


142 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


Bram remained silent. There was a pause, rather a 
long one. Then Mr. Cornthwaite spoke again — 

“Of course, you are sensible enough to understand 
that this is my business, and my son’s ; that it is a family 
matter, a difficulty in which I have to act for the best. 
And I hope,” he went on in a different tone, “ for your 
own sake, more than for mine, that you will not take any 
step so rash as leaving this office would be. Without 
notice, too ! ” 

“ As to that, sir, you had better let me go — and without 
notice,” said Bram with a sullen note in his voice which 
made Mr. Cornthwaite look at him with some anxiety, 
“ if it’s true that you’re going to make Mr. Christian leave 
Miss Claire in the lurch. For I tell you, sir,” and again 
he looked up, with a steely flash in his gray eyes and a 
look of stubborn ferocity about his long upper lip and 
straight mouth, “if I was to come face to face wi’ him 
after he’d done that thing I couldn’t keep my flsts off him ; 
Ah couldn’t, sir. That’s what comes of my being born 
in a different section of society, sir, I suppose. And so, 
as Ah’ve loved Mr. Christian, and as Ah’ve had much to 
thank you and him for, sir, you’d best let me go back — to 
my own section of society, where a man has to stand by 
his own deeds, like a man ! ” 

Mr. Cornth Waite’s attitude, his tone, changed insensibly 
as he looked and listened to the man who told him his 
views so honestly, and stood by them so flrmly. He saw 
that Bram was in earnest, and he began to walk up and 
down the room, thinking, planning, considering. He did 
not want to lose this clever young man ; he could not 
afford to do so. Bram had something like a genius for 
the details of business, and was besides as honest as the 
day ; not a too common combination. 

The young man waited, but at last, as Mr. Cornthwaite 
made no sign of addressing him, he turned to touch the 
handle of the door. Then Mr. Cornthwaite suddenly 
stopped in his walk, and made a sign to him to stay. 

“Well, Elshaw,” said he in a more genial tone, “will 
you, if you must go, promise me one thing ? Will you 


FACE TO FACE. 14S 

see Mr. Christian in my presence first, and hear what he 
has to say for himself ? ” 

Bram hesitated. 

“ I don’t want to hear anything,” said he sullenly. “ I’d 
rather go, sir.” 

“ No doubt you would, but you wouldn’t like to treat 
us in any way unfairly, would you, Bram ? You acknowl- 
edge that we’ve not treated you badly, you know.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ Well, then, you can hardly refuse to hear what the 
culprit has to say in his own defence. If, after hearing 
him, you are not satisfied, you can have the satisfaction 
of telling him what you think of him in good round terms 
before you go. Now, is that a bargain ? You stay here 
until I come back from town — at least — with or without 
(for, of course, you may be right, and he may not come) 
my son ? ” 

Bram hesitated ; but he could not well refuse. 

“ All right, sir. I’ll stay till you come back,” he an- 
swered sullenly. 

And, without another word or another look, he accepted 
his employer’s satisfied motion of assent as a dismissal, 
and left the room. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

FACE TO FACE. 

Doggedly, sullenly, with a hard mouth and cold eyes, 
Bram went about his day’s work in the office. His fellow- 
clerks knew that something of deep import had happened 
during that half-hour while he was shut up with Mr. Corn- 
thwaite in the inner room ; but so well did they know him 
by this time that no one made any attempt to learn from 
him what it was that had passed. 

Quietly, unostentatiously, without any apparent effort, 
Bram had made himself a unique position, with his office 
companions as well as with his employers. Very taciturn, 
very stolid of manner, never giving an unasked opinion 


144 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


on any subject, he always seemed to be too much absorbed 
in the details of work to have time or inclination for the 
discussions, the idle chatter, with which the rest beguiled 
the monotonous hours on every opportunity. 

But they had long since ceased to “ chaff ” him on his 
attitude, not through any distaste on his part for this 
form of attack, but as a natural result of the respect he 
inspired, and of the position he held with “ the guv’nor ” 
and his son. There was a feeling that he would be “ boss ” 
himself some day, and a consequent disposition to leave 
him alone. 

But when the day’s work was done, and Bram started 
on the walk back to Hessel, the look of dogged attention 
which his face had worn during office hours relaxed into 
one of keen anxiety. He had been able, by force of will, 
to thrust into the background of his mind the one subject 
which was all-important to him. Now that he was again, 
for fifteen hours, a free man, his thoughts fastened once 
more on Claire and on the question — Would Christian, 
obedient to his father and to self-interest, abandon her, or 
would he not ? 

Bram felt a dread of the answer. He would not allow 
to himself that he believed Christian capable of what he 
looked upon as an act of inconceivable baseness ; but 
down at the bottom of his heart there was a dumb mis- 
giving, an unacknowledged fear. 

And Bram, his thoughts stretching out beyond the 
limits he imposed upon them, asked himself what he 
should do for the best for the poor child, if she were left 
stranded, as Mr. Cornthwaite made no secret of intending. 
He had unconsciously assumed to himself, now that the 
image of Claire had been deposed from the high pedestal 
of his ideal, the attitude of guardian to this most helpless 
of creatures, taking upon himself in advance the posi- 
tion which her father ought to have held. 

If she were abandoned by her lover, it was he who 
would find her out, and care for her, and settle her in 
some place of safety. That she would never come back 
to the neighborhood of her own accord Bram felt sure. 


FACE TO FACE. 


145 


When Bram got back to Hessel, he called at once at 
the farm, with a lingering hope that something might 
have been heard of Claire, that she might have sent 
some message, written some letter to her father or to 
Joan. 

But she had not. He found Mr. Biron in the care of 
Joan, whose patience he tried severely by his fretfulness 
and irritability. The doctor had called again, and had 
expressed a growing fear of erysipelas, which had only 
increased the patient’s ill-temper, without making him any 
more careful of himself. He was drinking whisky and 
water when Bram came in, and Joan reported that he had 
been doing so all day, and that there was no reasoning 
with him or stopping him, even by using the authority of 
the doctor. 

Theodore was by this time in a maudlin and tearful con- 
dition, bewailing now the flight of his daughter, and now 
his own wounds, without ceasing. 

Bram did what he could to cheer him, and to persuade 
him to a more reasonable course of conduct, but the effect 
was hardly more than momentary. And on the follow- 
ing day his condition had undoubtedly become worse. 
Bram, however, was obliged to leave him to go to the 
office, where the day passed without incident. Mr. Corn- 
thwaite had gone up to town on the previous night, and 
had not returned. Bram began to hope that Christian had 
refused to come back. 

Two more days passed, during which Mr. Biron’s 
symptoms grew worse. The erysipelas had not only 
declared itself on the wounded part of the face, but was 
spreading rapidly. No attempt had been made to bring 
Meg Tyzack to book for the assault, in spite of Mr. Biron’s 
frenzied adjurations. Bram could not bear to have the 
name of Claire dragged through the mire, as it must be 
if the jealous woman were brought into Court; and 
although Mr. Biron troubled himself less about this than 
he did about the revenge he wanted for his own injuries, 
Joan was so bluntly outspoken on the subject that even 
he had to give up the idea. 

10 


146 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“ You’d best tak’ it quiet, sir,” said the good woman 
coolly. “ You see you couldn’t coom into Coort wi’ clean 
hands yourself, wi’ the Joodge and everybody knowin’ 
the life as Miss Claire led with you. Happen ye’d get 
told it served you roight ! ” 

And Bram concurring, though less outspokenly, the 
indignant Theodore found himself obliged to wait for his 
revenge until he could see about it himself. This period 
promised to be a long time in coming, as the erysipelas 
continued to spread, and threatened to attack the mem- 
branes of the brain. 

In the meantime, on the fourth day after the departure 
of Mr. Josiah Cornthwaite for London, Bram learned that 
father and son had returned home together. 

Bram’s heart sank. What of Claire ? His mind was 
filled with anxious thoughts of her, as he awaited the ex- 
pected summons to meet Christian face to face. 

But the day passed, and the next. Neither father nor 
son appeared at the office at the works ; and all that Bram 
could hear was that Mr. Christian was not very well. 
Bram looked upon this as a ruse, a trick. His sympathies 
were to be appealed to on behalf of the scoundrel of whose 
conduct he had spoken so openly. 

Another day passed, and another. Still the work of 
the head of the firm was done by deputy ; still the elder 
Mr. Cornthwaite remained at home, and his son, so Bram 
understood, with him. 

So at last Bram, not to be put off any longer, wrote a 
short note to Mr. Cornthwaite, senior, reminding him of 
the latter’s wish that he should see Christian before leav- 
ing the firm. 

The answer to this note, which Bram posted to Holme 
Park on his way to the works, reached him by hand the 
same evening before he left the office. It contained only 
these words : — 

“ Dear Elshaw, — You can come up and see my son at 
any time you like. — Yours faithfullj^, 

‘‘ Josiah Cornthwaite.” 


FACE TO FACE. 


147 


Bram started off to Holme Park at once, full of sullen 
anger against father and son. That this was the end he 
felt sure, the abrupt termination of a connection which 
had done so much for him, which had promised so much 
for his employers. Bram was not ungrateful. It was 
the feeling that this act had been committed by the man 
he loved and admired above all others, to whom he was 
indebted for his rise in life, which made the meeting so 
hard to him. 

It was the knowledge that it was Christian, who had 
been so good to himself, who had ruined the life of the 
woman he loved, that made Bram shrink from this inter- 
view. He was torn, as he went, between memories of the 
pleasant walks he and Christian had had together, of the 
talks in which he had always opposed a rigorous and per- 
haps narrow code of morals to his companion’s airy phi- 
losophy of selfishness, on the one hand ; and thoughts of 
Claire, brave, friendless, little Claire, on the other. And 
the more he thought, the more he shrank from the meet- 
ing. 

He knew by heart all Christian’s irresponsible speeches 
about women and the impossibility of doing them any 
harm except by their express desire and invitation ; knew 
that Christian always spoke of himself as a weak creature 
who yielded too readily to temptation, although he avoided 
it when he could. He knew every turn of the head, every 
trick of the voice, which could be so winning, so caressing, 
with which Christian would try to avert his wrath, as he 
had done many times before. He knew also that Chris- 
tian had stronger, weapons than these, in appeals to his 
affection, to the bond which Christian’s own generosity 
and discernment had been the first to forge. 

And knowing all this, Bram, determined to make one 
last appeal for justice and mercy for Claire, and if unsuc- 
cessful to pour out such fiery indignation as even Christian 
should quiver under, steeled himself and set his teeth, and 
strode up to the big house at dusk with an agitated heart. 

In the gloom of the foggy night the lamp in the hall 
shone with a yellow light through the evergreens, and the 


148 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


whole place had a desolate look, which struck Bram as he 
went up. To his inquiry for Mr. Cornth waite the servant 
who opened the door said, “ Yes, sir,” with an odd, half- 
alarmed look, and showed him into tlie study, where 
Mr. Cornth waite sprang up from a chair at the sight of 
him. 

“ Ah, Elshaw,” said he in a troubled voice, without hold- 
ing out his hand, “ you have come to see Christian. Well, 
you shall see him.” 

Without another word, without listening to Brain’s 
renewed expostulations, he went out of the room, with a 
gesture of curt invitation to Bram to follow. 

tip the stairs they went in silence. The fog seemed to 
have got into the house, to have shrouded every corner 
with gloom. On the first fioor Mr. Cornthwaite opened a 
door, and beckoned Bram to come in. As the young man 
entered the room a shriek of wild laughter, in a voice 
which was like and yet unlike that of Chris, met his ears. 
A figure sprang up in a bed which was opposite the door, 
and a woman, in the dark gown and white cap and apron 
of a sick nurse, stood up beside the bed, trying to hold the 
sick man down. Bram stood petrified. There was the 
man of whom he was in search, unconscious of his pres- 
ence, though he stared at him with bright eyes. 

Christian was raving in the delirium of fever. 

In a moment Bram experienced a revulsion of feeling 
so strong that he felt he could scarcely stand. Christian’s 
follies, faults, vices, all were forgotten ; there lay, dan- 
gerously ill, the lovable companion, the staunch friend. 
In that moment Bram, staring at the man he knew so 
well, who knew him not, felt that he would have laid 
down his own life to save that of Christian. 

Suddenly he felt a hand laid gently on his arm. Mr. 
Cornthwaite, who had been watching him narrowly, saw 
the effect the sight had had upon the young man, and 
promptly drew him back, and shut the door behind 
them. 

“ Typhoid,” said he, in answer to an imploring look from 
Bram. “He must have been sickening for it when he 


FACE TO FACE. 149 

went away. I brought him back very ill, and the fever 
declared itself yesterday.” 

Bram did not ask anything for some minutes. He 
knew that Christian’s life was in danger. 

“ His wife ? She has forgiven him ? She is with him ? ” 
asked Bram. 

“Thank goodness no,” replied Mr. Cornthwaite ener- 
getically. “ I begin to hate the little canting fool. She 
offered to nurse him, I will say that ; but we thought it 
better to refuse, and she was content.” 

“And — Claire?” said Bram. 

Mr Cornthwaite grew impatient directly. 

“ I know nothing about her,” said he coldly. 

Bram straightened himself, as if at a challenge. 

“ You did not see her in London ? ” he asked. 

“ No.” 

“ Nor trouble yourself about her ? ” 

“ No. And I sincerely hope, Elshaw, you are going to 
give up all thoughts of doing so either.” 

Bram smiled grimly. 

“Not while I have a hand or a foot left, Mr. Corn- 
thwaite.” 

“ At any rate, you will not think of marrying her ? ” 

There was a silence. Then Bram said, in a very low 
voice, very sadly — 

“ No.” 

He did not know whether he was not cruel, hard, in 
this decision. But he could not help himself. The feel- 
ing he had for Claire, for his first love, for his ideal, could 
never die ; but it had changed sadly ; greatly changed. 
It was love still, but with a difference. 

Mr Cornthwaite, however, was scarcely satisfied. 

“ You will not think of leaving us, at least yet ? ” he 
said presently. Then, as he saw a look he did not like 
in Bram’s face he hastened to add — “You are bound 
to wait until my son is better — or worse ; until I am 
free to go to the office. I cannot be making changes 
now.” 

“ Very well, Mr. Cornthwaite. But I must have a holi- 


150 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


day, perhaps a two or three days’ holiday, to start from 
to-morrow morning.” 

“ All right. Good-night.” 

They were in the hall, and Bram, who had refused to 
re-enter the study, had his lingers upon the outer door. 

“ Good-night,” said he. 

And he went out. He was full of a new idea, which 
had suddenly struck him even while he was talking to 
Mr. Cornthwaite. He would not go to London; poor 
little Claire, abandoned by her lover, or rather by his 
father, would not have stayed there. It had flashed into 
his mind that there was one spot in the world to which 
she would direct her wandering steps if left all alone in 
the world. It was the little Yorkshire town of Chelmsley, 
where her mother lay buried. 

On the following morning, therefore, Bram took train 
northwards, and, reaching before noon the pretty coun- 
try town, went straight from the station to the big, 
square, open market-place, which, with the little irreg- 
ular old-fashioned dwellings which surrounded it, might 
be called, not only the heart, but the whole of the 
town. 

It was market-day, and at the primitive stalls which 
were ranged in neat rows, stood the farmers’ wives and 
daughters before their tempting wares. 

It was a cold but not unpleasant day, and the sight 
was a pretty one. But Bram had no eyes, no heart for 
any sight but one. He went to the principal inn, ordered 
some bread and cheese, and asked if there were any 
persons living in the town bearing the name of Corn- 
thwaite; this he knew to have been the maiden name 
of Claire’s mother. 

The innkeeper knew of none. There had been a family 
of that name living at a big house outside the town ; but 
that was years before. 

Still Bram did not give up hope. It was something 
stronger than instinct which told him that to this, 
the spot where her mother’s childhood had been passed, 
Claire would make her way. Disappointed in his inqui- 


SANCTUARY. 151 

lies, Bram set about what was almost a house-to-house 
search. 

And towards the evening, when the lights began to 
appear in the houses, he was successful. He was search- 
ing the cottages on the outskirts of the town, and in one 
of them, crouching before the fire in a tiny room, where 
geraniums in pots formed a screen before the window, he 
saw Claire. 

He stared at her for some seconds, until the tears 
welled up into his eyes. 

Then he tapped at the window-pane, and she started 
up with a low cry. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

SANCTUARY. 

With his heart in his mouth Bram waited. Would she 
come out to him ? She stood up, with the firelight shin- 
ing on her figure, but leaving her face in shadow, so that 
he could not tell what expression she wore. 

He wondered whether she knew him. After waiting 
for a few moments he tapped again at the window, ad- 
vancing his face as close as possible to the glass. Then, 
as she still did not move, he stepped back, and was going 
towards the door, when by a quick gesture she checked 
him, and seemed to intimate that he was to wait for her 
to come out to him. 

At the same moment she left the room. 

Bram waited. 

When some minutes had passed, and still she did not 
come out, he began to feel alarmed, to wonder whether 
she had given him the slip. He walked round to the back, 
and saw that the cottage, which was one of a row of three, 
had a good garden behind it, and that there was a path 
which led from the garden across the fields. 

Presently he went round to the front again, and knocked 
at the door. It was opened after the second knock, by a 


152 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


very respectable-looking old woman, with a kindly, pleas- 
ant face. 

“ Is Miss Biron staying here ? ” asked Bram, wondering 
whether Claire was using her own name or passing under 
another. 

But the answer put to flight any doubts. 

“Yes, sir,” said the woman at once. “ She is staying 
here, but she isn’t in at present. She’s just this minute 
gone out.” 

Bram felt his blood run cold. Claire was avoiding him 
then ! The woman seemed to know of no reason for this 
sudden disappearance, and went on to ask — 

“You are a friend of hers, sir ?” 

“ Oh, yes, a very old friend of hers and her father’s.” 

“ And do you come from her father, sir ? ” 

“ Yes, I saw him this morning.” 

“ Ah,” cried she sharply. “ And T hope he’s ashamed 
of himself by this time for turning his daughter, his own 
daughter, out of his house ! ” 

Bram said nothing. He did not know how much this 
woman knew, nor who she was, nor anything about her. 

“ I suppose he wants her back again ? ” she went on in 
the same tone. 

“ He does indeed. He’s very ill. He has erysipelas all 
over his face and one of his hands, and is even in danger 
of his life. It has led to serious inflammation internally. 
He wants a great deal of care, such care as only his 
daughter can give him.” 

“ Dear me ! Dear me ! Well, we must hope it’ll soften 
his hard heart ! ” said the woman, coming out a step to 
listen. “ He was always a light-minded, careless sort of 
a man. But I never thought he’d turn out so bad as he 
has done — never. He was a taking sort of a gentleman 
in the old days when he came courting Miss Clara, and 
married her and carried her off.” 

A light broke in upon Bram. This was some old ser- 
vant of the family of Claire’s mother, who had lived out 
her years of service, settled down, and “ found religion ” 
within sight of the old house, within the walls of which 


SANCTUARY. 


153 


her girlhood had been passed. He had seen from the out- 
side, as he looked in through the window at Claire, the 
framed texts of Scripture which hung on the walls, the 
harmonium in the corner, with a large hymn-book open 
upon it — the usual interior of the English self-respecting 
cottager. 

“ You lived in the family,” said Bram, “ did you not ? ” 

“ Why, yes, sir. I was under housemaid, and right 
through upper-housemaid to housekeeper with them in 
the old gentleman’s and lady’s time. Mr. Biron’s told 
you about me, no doubt, sir,” she added, with complacent 
belief that she was still fresh in that gentleman’s mind. 
“ And I don’t suppose he had many a good word for me. 
I never did like the idea of his being half-French. I was 
always afraid it would turn out badly, always. I suppose 
he thought of me at once when he wanted his daughter 
back, sir ? ” 

Bram thought this suggestion would do very well as an 
explanation of his own appearance at the cottage, so he 
did not contradict her. He asked if she knew where Claire 
had gone to. 

“Well, no, sir, I don’t. She ran upstairs, and put 
on her things all in a hurry, and went out at the 
back. I suppose she remembered something she’d for- 
gotten this morning when she went out to do my little bit 
of marketing for me. And yet — no — she’d have gone out 
the front way for that.” The old woman stared at the 
young man with wakening intelligence. She perceived 
some signs of agitation in him. “Maybe she saw you 
through the window, sir, and didn’t want to speak to 
you,” she suggested shrewdly. 

Bram did not contradict her. 

“ Where does the path at the back lead to ? ” he asked, 
“ I must see her. I think it’s very likely, as you say. 
that she doesn’t want to; but she would never forgive 
herself if her father were to die, would she ? ” 

“ Lord, no, sir. Well, she may have gone out that way 
and then turned to the left back into the town. Or she 
may — though I don’t think it’s likely— she may have gone 


154 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


on towards Little Scrutton. She’s fond of a walk to the old 
abhey, that runs down to the left past Sir Joseph’s plan- 
tation. But I should hardly think she’d go that far so 
late, and by herself too ! ” 

“ Thanks. Well, if she’s gone that way I can catch her 
up, or meet her as she comes back,” said Bram. “ Thank 
you. Good-evening.” 

He hid as well as he could the anxiety which was in his 
heart, and set off, passing, by the woman’s invitation, 
through the cottage kitchen, by the footpath across the 
fields. 

He was half-mad with fear lest Claire, in an access of 
shame, should have fied from the shelter she had found 
under the good woman’s roof, determined not to return to 
a hiding-place which had been discovered. It seemed 
clear to him that the old woman knew nothing but the 
fact that Theodore had sent his daughter away, and for 
one brief, splendid moment Bram asked himself whether 
that were indeed the whole truth, and the story of her 
flight with Christian an ugly nightmare, dishonoring 
only to the brains which had conceived it. 

But then, like a black pall, there descended on his pas- 
sionate hopes the remembrance of Claire’s look when he 
last saw her at the farm ; of the horror, the shame in her 
face ; of her abrupt flight then ; or her flight now. What 
other explanation could there be of all this? Was he 
not mad to entertain a hope in the face of overwhelming 
evidence ? 

But for all this he did hug to his heart a ray of com- 
fort, of hope, as he reached the high-road, and quickly 
making up his mind to try the way into the country in- 
stead of that which led into the town started along be- 
tween the bare hedges in the darkness with a quick step 
and an anxious heart. 

The road was easy to follow, lying as it did, between 
hedges all the way. The plantation of which the old 
woman had spoken was some two miles out. Then Bram 
found a road dipping sharply down to the left, as she had 
said ; and, after a few moments’ hesitation, he turned into 


SANCTUARY. 


155 


it. For some distance he went down the steep hill in the 
shadow of the fir trees of the plantation. At the bottom 
he came to a little group of scattered cottages, and follow- 
ing the now winding road he came suddenly upon a sight 
that made him pause. 

The moon, clear, frosty, nearly at the full, shone down 
on a wide valley, shut in with gentle, well-wooded slopes, a 
very garden of peace and beauty. Close under the nearest 
hill stood the ruined abbey, perhaps even more imposing 
in its majestic decay than it had been in the old days 
when a roof hid its lofty arches and tall clustered pillars 
from the gaze of the profane. 

Coming upon it suddenly, Bram was struck by its mas- 
sive beauty, its solitary grandeur. The walls, far out of 
the reach of the smoke of the town, were still of a glaring 
whiteness ; the moon shone through the pointed clere- 
story windows, and cast long, black shadows upon the 
grass, and the broken white stones which lay strewn 
about within the walls. Here and there a mass of ivy, 
sturdy, thick, and bushy, broke the hard outline of tall 
white wall; or a clump of hawthorn, now bare, half- 
hid the small, round-headed tower windows of the tran- 
septs. 

Bram went forward slowly, fascinated by the sight, and 
seized strongly by the conviction that little Claire would 
have found the stately old walls as magnetic in their at- 
traction as he did. He came to the fence which sur- 
rounded the ruin, and climbed over it without troubling 
himself to look for a gate. 

The ground was rough and uneven, encumbered with 
loose stones. He wandered about the transepts and the 
long choir, which were all that were left of the church 
itself, hunting in every corner and in the deep shadow of 
every bush. But he found no trace of Claire. Yet still 
he was haunted by the thought that it was here, within 
walls which had once been held holy, that the little fugi- 
tive would have taken shelter, would have liidden from 
him. So strongly did this idea possess him that he at last 
sat down on a stone in the ruined choir, determined to 


156 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


keep vigil there all night, and to make a further search 
when morning broke. 

It was a cold night, and sleep in the circumstances was 
out of the question. He walked up and down and sat 
down to rest upon the flat stone alternately until dawn 
came. A long, weary night it was undoubtedly. Yet 
through it all he never lost for more than a few moments 
at a time the feeling that Claire was near at hand, that 
when daylight came he should And her. 

The dwellers in the cottages outside the ruin were early 
astir, and one or two perceived Bram, and came up to the 
railings to look at him. But as none of them seemed to 
feel that his intrusion was any business of theirs he was 
left alone until the light was strong enough for him to 
renew his search. Then, not within the walls of the 
church itself, but in the refectory, which was choked 
up and encumbered with broken stones and rubbish 
which had made search difficult in the night, he found 
her. 

There was a little stone gallery, with a broken stone 
staircase leading up to it, at one end of the refectory. 
And here crouched in a corner, fast asleep, with her head 
against the stone wall, was Claire. Her small face looked 
pinched and gray with the cold. He took off his overcoat 
and covered her with it very gently. But soft as his 
touch was she awoke, stared at him for a moment as if 
she scarcely knew him, and then sprang to her feet. 

She was so stiff and cramped and chilled that she stag- 
gered. Bram caught her arm, but she wrenched herself 
away with a sound like a sob, and in her eyes there came 
a fear, a shame so deep, so terrible, that Bram looked 
away from her, unable to meet it with his own mournful 
eyes. 

“ Why did you run away from me ? ” asked he, so kindly, 
with such a brave affectation of rough cheerfulness that 
the tears came rushing into the girl’s eyes. “You might 
have known I didn’t want to do you any harm, mightn’t 
you ? I only wish I’d brought you some better news than 
I do,” 



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4 


SANCTUARY. 


157 


He was looking away, through the tall, pointed arches, 
at the leafless trees beyond. He heard her draw a long 
breath. Then she asked, in a very low voice : — 

“ What news, then ? ” 

“ Your father wants you back. He’s very ill — very ill. 
He’s had an accident, and burnt his head and one of his 
hands badly. You’ve got to come back and nurse him ; 
he doesn’t mind what anybody says, and he does foolish 
and rash things that only you can save him from. You’ll 
come back, won’t you ? ” 

There was a pause. Bram looked at her, and she 
bowed her head in silent assent. She would not meet 
his eyes ; she hung her head, and he saw that she was 
crying. 

“We’d better make haste and get back to Chelmsley,” 
said he in a robust voice. “ I forgot to look out a train ; 
or rather I had hoped to have taken you back last night. 
But you gave me the slip ; I can’t think why. You’ve 
got nothing but a cold night and perhaps a bad cough by 
your freak.” 

Claire said nothing. She seemed to be petrified with 
shame, and scarcely to feel the cold without from the 
suffering within. It was pitiful to see her. Bram, long 
as he had thought over the poor child and her desolate 
situation, suffered new agonies on finding how deep her 
anguish was. A sense of unspeakable degradation seemed 
to possess her, to make every glance of her eyes furtive, 
every movement constrained. 

“ I will come,” she said humbly, in a voice which was 
hoarse from exposure. 

“Of course you will come,” retorted Bram good- 
humoredly. “And put your best foot foremost too, 
for ” 

She interrupted him hastily, coldly. 

“ But let me go alone, please. Thank you for coming ; 
it was very good of you. But I want to go alone. And 
I want you not to come to see us at the farm. If you 

do ” Her voice grew stronger as Bram tried to protest, 

and suddenly she raised her head, and looked at him with 


158 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


a flash of excitement in her eyes. “ If you do, I shall 
kill myself ! ” 

“Very well,” said Bram quietly. “Good-bye, then.” 

He jumped the stone steps, offering the assistance of 
his hand, which she declined. And he crossed the rough 
ground quickly, and went through the roofless church on 
his way back to Chelmsley. 

Perhaps Claire’s heart smote her for her ungraciousness. 
At any rate, when he glanced back, after climbing over 
the fence, he saw that she must have followed him very 
quickly, for she was only a few yards away. There was 
a look in her eyes, now that she was caught unawares, 
which was like a stab to his tender heart. 

He stopped. She stopped also, and made a movement 
as if to turn back to run away. He checked her by an 
imploring gesture. 

“ You will come, really come ; you’ve promised, haven’t 
you ? ” said he. 

She bowed her head. He dared not hazard another 
word. So, without so much as another glance from her, 
he went quickly up the hill on his return to Chelmsley. 

What a meeting it had been, after so much anxious 
waiting! Nothing had been said that might not have 
been said any day by one casual acquaintance to an- 
other. And yet their hearts were nigh to bursting all the 
time. 

Bram went straight to the station, hungry as he was. 
He thought Claire would tell the old woman a better story 
than he could make to account for her absence all night. 
And he thought that the sooner he was out of the place 
the sooner Claire would follow him back to Hessel. 
Within an hour and a half he was in the train, returning 
to ShefiSeld. He sent a message up to the farm on his 
arrival to prepare Theodore for his daughter’s return, and 
then he set his mind to his office work for the remainder 
of the day. 

When he returned to Hessel that evening he ventured 
to tap at the kitchen window of the farm. Joan came out 
to him. Yes, Miss Claire had come, the good woman said. 


BY THE FURNACE FIRES. 


159 


wiping her eyes. And she hoped things might go right 
But Meg Tyzack had been hanging about the place, and 
Joan was keeping all the doors locked. 

“ Ah’m in a terrible way abaht that woman,” said Joan 
in a deep whisper. “ Ah haven’t towd her Miss Claire’s 
coom back, and Ah hope nobody else will. For Ah don’t 
think she’s altogether in her roight moind, and Ah would- 
n’t have her in t’ house again for summat ! ” 

This was grave news. Bram, feeling that there was 
nothing he could do for the protection of the threatened 
household, stared out before him with trouble in his eyes. 

“ What did Mr. Biron say when he saw his daughter ? ” 
asked he. 

Joan pursed up her lips. 

“ He didn’t dare say mooch,” said she, with a compre- 
hensive nod. “ He didn’t even say how he’d coom by 
t’ burns ! It was me towd Miss Claire abaht Meg ! And 
she heard me quite solemn, and didn’t ask many questions. 
And when Ah towd her abaht Mr. Christian’s having t’ 
fever she joost shivered, and said naught.” 

Bram shivered too, and hurried away up the hill to his 
lodging. 


CHAPTER XX. 

BY THE FURNACE FIRES. 

Then there began a strange time of dreary waiting for 
some crisis which Bram felt was approaching, although 
he could hardly foreshadow what the nature of it would 
be. 

Things could not go on much longer at Duke’s Farm 
in the way they had been doing for some time now. 
With nobody to look after him, the farm bailiff grew daily 
more neglectful of all business but his own. It went to 
Bram’s heart to see ruin creeping gradually nearer, while 
he dared not put out a helping hand to arrest its approach. 
He did try. He wrote a note to Claire, studiously formal, 


160 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


saying that while her father’s illness continued he should 
be glad to keep an eye on the management of the farm, as 
he had done some months ago. But the answer he got 
was a note still more formal than his own, in which Claire 
thanked him, but said she thought it better now that 
affairs had reach their present stage to let them go on as 
they were. After this to move a step in the direction of 
helping her would have been unwarrantable interference, 
which Bram would have undertaken once, when they were 
friends, bnt which he could not venture upon now. 

Still he tried to perform the office of guardian angel, 
hampered as he was. 

Joan, who was his good friend still, and who went daily 
to the farm to do the housework as usual, kept him fully 
acquainted with all that went on there. She told him 
that Mr. Biron, who was still suffering from erysipelas, 
which died away and broke out again, was growing more 
irritable every day, so that it was a marvel how his daugh- 
ter could treat him with the patience and gentleness she 
showed. Claire herself, so Joan said, was altogether 
changed ; and indeed Bram, when he caught a glimpse of 
her at the windows, could see the alteration for himself. 
She had grown quite white, and the set, hard expression 
her face wore made it weird and uncanny. All her youth- 
ful prettiness seemed to have disappeared ; she never 
smiled, she hardly ever talked. NTo single word, so far as 
Joan knew, had passed between father and daughter on the 
subject of the latter’s disappearance and return. Theodore 
was glad to get his patient nurse back ; glad to have 
some one to bully, to grumble at, and that seemed to 
be all. 

Claire never went out, and Joan never encouraged her 
to do so, for Meg Tyzack still hung about the place, Joan 
having encountered her early in the morning and late in 
the evening, on her way to and from the farm. Meg, so 
Joan said, would slink out of the way with a laugh or a 
jeering question about Claire or her father. 

« Ah doan’t believe,” remarked Joan, when she had 
given Bram the account of one of these meetings, “ as the 


BY THE FURNACE FIRES. 161 

lass is quite right. Yon young spark has a deal to an- 
swer for ! ” 

The “ young spark ” in question, Christian Cornthwaite, 
was in the meantime doing something to expiate his mis- 
deeds, for his illness was both dangerous and tedious. 
Day after day, week after week, there came the same bul- 
letin to the many inquirers down at the works — “ No 
change.” Mr. Cornthwaite lost his grave, harassed look. 
He consulted Bram daily ; took him, if possible, more into 
his confidence than before, over the details of the busi- 
ness ; but he never talked about his son. He seemed, 
Bram thought, to have given up hope in a singularly com- 
plete manner ; he spoke, he looked, as if Christian were 
already dead. In the circumstances, Bram found it impos- 
sible to bring before the anxious father the subject of 
Claire, and the distresses of the household at Duke’s 
Farm. 

Bram heard from Joan of the duns whose presence was 
now daily felt. Some of these he found out and settled 
with quietly himself ; but he did not dare to pursue this 
course very far, lest Claire’s feminine quickness should find 
him out. 

The subject of ready money was a more delicate one 
still. Bram began by giving Joan small sums to supply 
the most pressing needs of the household at the farm, and 
for a little while she managed to evade Claire’s curious 
questions, and even to pretend that it was she, Joan, who 
occasionally lent a few shillings for the daily purchase of 
necessary food. 

But one evening, when Bram, as his custom was, way- 
laid her as she came from the farm, as soon as she was 
out of sight of the window, Joan looked at him with eyes 
full of alarm. 

“ Eh, but she’s found me aht, Mr. Elshaw, an’ she’s led 
me a pretty dance for what you’ve done. Ah can tell ye. ” 

“ Why, what’s that, Joan ? ” 

« That there money ! She guessed, bless ye ! who ’twas 
as gave it to me. ‘ Joan, ’ says she, ‘ if ye take money 
from him again, if it’s to keep us from starving, Ah’ll go 

II 


162 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


and throw my sen down t’ pit shaft oop top o’ t’ hill ! ’ 
And she means it, she do ! Ah doan’t like t’ looks of her. 
What between her father and t’other one — ” and Joan 
jerked her head in the direction of the works down in the 
town — “ she’s losing her wits too, Mr Elshaw, that’s what 
she’s doing! ”. 

Bram was silent for some minutes. 

“Well, it can’t go on like this,” said he at last. “The 
creditors will get too clamorous to be put off. If I could 
see Mr. Biron 1 should advise him to ” 

But Joan cut him short with an emphatic gesture. 

“ Doan’t you try it on, Mr. Elshaw ! ” cried she earnestly. 
“ Doan’t you try to get at Mr. Biron. That’s joost what 
he wants, to get hold of you. Time after time he says to 
Miss Claire, ‘ If Ah could see young Elshaw,’ says he, 
‘Ah could settle summat.’ But she won’t have it. It’s 
t’ one thing she won’t let him have his way abaht. ‘ If he 
cooins in t’ house,’ says she, ‘ Ah’ll go aht o’ ’t.’ So now 
you know how she feels, Mr. Elshaw, and bless her poor 
little heart. Ah like her t’ better for ’t ! ” 

Bram did not say what he felt about it. He listened to 
all she had to say, and then with a husky “ Good-night, 
Joan,” he left her and went home. lie too liked the spirit 
Claire showed in avoiding him, in refusing help from the 
one friend whose hand was always held out to her. But, 
on the other hand, the impossibility of doing her any good, 
of even seeing her to exchange the warm handclasp of an 
old friend, gnawed at his heart, and made him sore and 
sick. 

A dozen times he found himself starting for the farm 
with the intention of forcing himself upon her, of insist- 
ing on being seen by her, so that he might offer the help, 
the comfort, with which heart and hand were over- 
flowing. But each time he remembered that, brave as he 
felt before seeing her, in her presence he would be con- 
strained and helpless, easily repelled by the coldness 
which she knew how to assume, by the look of suffering, 
only too genuine, he could see in her drawn face. 

And so the days grew into weeks, until one day, not 


BY THE FURNACE FIRES. 


163 


long before Christmas, he was crossing from one room to 
another down at the works with a sheaf of letters in his 
hand, when he came face to face with Christian. 

Brain stopped, almost fell back ; but he did not utter a 
word. 

Christian, who was looking pale and very delicate, held 
out his hand with a smile. 

“ Well, Bram, glad or sorry to see me back again ?” 

“ Glad, very glad indeed, Mr. Christian,” said Bram. 

He wanted to speak rather coldly, but he could not. 
The sight of his friend, so lately recovered from a danger- 
ous illness, and even now evidently suffering from its 
effects, was too much for him. Every word of that short 
speech seemed to bubble up from his heart. Christian, 
perhaps even more touched than he, and certainly, by 
reason of his recent illness, less able to conceal his feel- 
ings, broke into a sob. 

“ They told me — my father told me, you wouldn’t 
be,” said he, trying to laugh. “ Said you came up to the 
house with the intention of punching my head, but that 
you relented, and consented to put off' the gentle chastise- 
ment until I was on my feet again Oh, Bram, Bram, for 
shame ! When you knew I was always a mauvais sujet 
too, and never pretended to be anything else ! ” 

“ But, Mr. Christian,” began Bram, who felt that he was 
choking, that the passions of love for Claire and loyalty 
to the friend to whom he owed his rise in life were tear- 
ing at his heartstrings, ‘‘ when a woman ” Chris in- 

terrupted him, placing one rather tremulous hand lightly 
on his shoulder. 

“My dear boy, d the women! Oh, don’t look 

shocked when I say d the women, because I speak 

from conviction, and a man’s convictions should be re- 
spected, especially when he speaks, as I do, from actual 

experience. I say d the women ; and, moreover, I 

say that until you can say d the women too, you are 

incapable of any friendship that is worthy of the name. 
There ! Now, go home, and ponder those words ; for 
they are words of wisdom ! ” 


164 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


And Chris, giving him a familiar, affectionate push 
towards the door of the room he had been about to enter, 
passed on. 

The news of Christian’s return to the office spread 
quickly, and was received with great personal satisfaction 
throughout the works, where the easy, pleasant manners 
of the “ guv’nor’s ” son had made him a universal favor- 
ite. The tidings flew beyond the works, too, for Joan 
told Bram that Mr. Biron and his daughter had heard of 
Christian’s return, and added that the mention of his 
name had been received by Claire in dead, blank silence. 

“ Poor lass ! She looked that queer when she heard 
it,” said Joan. 

Bram, as usual, said nothing. The conflict between his 
feeling towards Claire and his feeling towards Christian 
grew hourly more acute. 

“ She wouldn’t hear what Mr. Biron had to say,” pur- 
sued Joan. “ But she joost oop and went to her room, 
and Ah saw no more of her till Ah coom away. But she 
were that white ! Ah wished she’d talk more, or else cry 
more ; Ah doan’t like them pains as you doan’t hear 
nothing abaht. They gnaw, they do ! It ’d be better 
for her to go abaht calling folks names, like Meg ! ” 

But this reference to Meg Tyzack in the same breath 
with Claire wounded Bram, who turned away quickly. 
Surely the life of patient self-sacrifice she was leading in 
constant attendance upon her selfish father was ample 
atonement for the error into which she had been driven. 

It was a great shock to him when, on the afternoon of 
the following day, just before the clerks left the office, he 
heard a rumor that Miss Biron had come down to the 
works, and was asking to see Mr. Christian. Bram at 
first refused to believe the report. He went downstairs 
on purpose to find out the truth for himself, and saw in 
the yard, to his dismay, the figure of Claire in an angle 
of the wall. Well as he knew the little figure, he would 
not even then believe the evidence of his own eyes with- 
out further proof. He crossed the yard towards her. 
Claire ran out, passing close to him, so that he was able 


BY THE FURNACE FIRES. 


165 


to look into her face. It was indeed she, but her face 
was so much changed, wore an expression so wild, so 
desperate, that Bram felt his heart stand still. 

He called to her, but she only ran the faster. She 
disappeared into the building which contained the offices, 
and quickly as Bram followed he could not track her. 
When he reached the bottom of the staircase, he could 
neither see nor hear anything of her. 

While he was wondering what would happen, whether 
she would present herself in the office of old Mr. Corn- 
thwaite himself, and be treated by him with the brutal 
cynicism he always expressed while speaking of her, or 
whether she would find her way straight to Christian, he 
heard footsteps in the corridor above, and a moment later 
Chris himself, singing softly to himself, and swinging his 
umbrella as if he had not a care in the world, appeared At 
the top of the stair. 

“ Hallo, Bram ! ” cried he, catching sight of the young 
fellow, and laughing at him over the iron balustrade. 
“ You look as solemn as a whole bench of judges. What’s 
the matter ? ” 

Bram hesitated. He did not know whether to tell 
Christian that Claire was about, or whether to hold his 
tongue. Doubt was cut short in a couple of seconds, how- 
ever, when Christian reached the bottom of the staircase. 
For he came face to face with Claire, who had appeared as 
quickly and as silently as she had previously disappeared 
from one of the doors which opened on the ground floor. 

Both stared at each other without a word for the space 
of half a minute. Both were pale as the dead ; but while 
he shook from head to foot she was outwardly quite calm. 

“ I want — to speak to you,” she said at last. 

Her voice sounded hard, unlike her usual tones. 
There was something in them which sounded in Bram’s 
ears like a menace. 

Christian looked around, as if afraid of being seen. 

“ Hot here,” said he quickly. “ In the works. I will 
go flrst.” 

He disappeared at once, and Claire followed him out 


166 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


through the door and across the first of the yards, 
where the work was slackening off, and where swarms 
of dusky, grimy figures, their eyes gleaming white in 
their smoke and dust-begrimed faces, were hustling 
each other in their eagerness to be out. Like a fiash 
of lightning there passed through Bram’s mind, brought 
there by the sudden contact with this black, toiling 
world from which Christian had rescued him, by the 
strong well-remembered smell of mingled sweat, coal- 
dust, and fustian, an overwhelming sense of love and 
gratitude for Chris, mingled with fear. 

Yet what was he afraid of? What made him struggle 
through the crowd with a white face and laboring 
breath, in mad anxiety to keep close to the footsteps of 
the man and the woman? He could not tell. For 
surely he had no fear of poor, little, helpless Claire, 
however wild her look might be, however desperate the 
straits in which she found herself ! 

He had lost sight of both of them within a few steps 
of the office doors. They had been swallowed up in 
the stream of workmen who were pressing out as they 
went in. 

Bram could only go at a venture in one direction 
through yards and past workshops, without much idea 
whether he was on the right track or not. He had a 
fancy that he might perhaps come up with them near 
the spot where he had first seen them together on that 
hot August afternoon eighteen months before, when 
Christian had picked him out for notice to his father, 
and so laid the foundation of his fortunes. 

But when Bram got there, and stood where, rod in 
hand, he had stood that day, just outside one of the 
great rolling sheds, wiping the sweat from his forehead, 
he found the place deserted. The noise of the day had 
ceased ; the steam hammers stood in their places like a 
row of closed jaws after an infernal meal. A huge iron 
plate, glowing red under its dusky gray surface in the 
darkness lay on the ground near Bram’s feet — fiery relic 
of the labors of the day. 


BY THE FURNACE FIRES. 


167 


Bram passed on, peering into the sheds, where the 
machinery was still, and where the great leather bands 
hung resting on the grinding wheels. Past the huge 
presses he went, where the glowing plates of steel are 
curled into shape like wax under the slow descending, 
crushing weight of iron. Through the great room where 
the great armor-plates are shaved down, the steel shav- 
ings curling up like yards upon yards of silver ribbon 
under the slow, steady advance of the huge machine. 

At last Bram fancied that he caught the sound of 
voices : the one shrill and vehement, the other deeper, 
lower, the voice of a man. He hurried on. 

Through the heart of the works, which stretched 
for hundreds of acres on either side of it, ran the railway, 
at this point a wide network of lines, crossing and re- 
crossing each other, carrying the goods traffic of the 
busy city. Bram came out upon it as he heard the 
voices, and looked anxiously, about him. 

And at once he discerned, on the other side of the 
railway line, two figures engaged not merely in the 
wordy conflict which had already come to his ears, but 
in an actual physical struggle, the girl clinging, drag- 
ging ; the man trying to push her off. 

Brain’s heart seemed to stand still. For, with a thrill 
of horror, he saw that a train had suddenly come out 
from under the bridge on his left, and was rapidly ap- 
proaching the spot where the two struggling, swaying 
figures stood. He shouted, and dashed forward across 
the broad network of lines. Caution was always neces- 
sary when these were crossed, but he did not look either 
to the right or to the left; he could see only those 
struggling figures and the train bearing down upon 
them. 

But his effort was made in vain. Before he could reach 
them the train had overtaken them, there was a wild, 
horrible shriek, and then a deep groan. Bram stood back 
shaking in every limb, until the train had passed by. 
Then, sick, blinded, he stared down at the line with a 
terrible sound in his ears. 


168 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


On the ground before him lay a bleeding, mangled 
heap, writhing in agony, uttering the horrible groans 
and sobs of a man dying in fearful pain. 

It was Christian Cornthwaite. 


CHAPTER XXL 

THE FIRE GOES OUT. 

A GREAT sob burst from Bram’s lips as he threw him- 
self down beside Christian, whose moans were terrible to 
hear. He had been caught by the train, the wheels of the 
engine having passed over both his legs, crushing and 
mangling them in the most horrible manner. Bram saw 
at a glance that there was not the slightest hope of saving 
his friend’s life, and that there was only the faintest 
chance of prolonging it for a little while. 

Fortunately, help was at hand. A man, one of the hands 
employed at the works, ran out from the sheds which 
bordered the railway. He was in a panic of terror, and 
was at first almost incapable of listening to the directions 
Bram gave him. 

Such first aid as it was possible to give Bram was 
already giving. But Christian himself shook his head 
feebly, and made a faint gesture to stop him. 

“ It’s all of no use, Bram,” said he, in a broken voice. 
“She’s done for me; she’s had her revenge now. You 
may just as well leave me alone, and then the next passing 
train will put me out of my pain. Oh, I would be thank- 
ful — thankful ” 

Another moan broke from his lips, and his head, which 
was wet with great beads of agony, fell like lead in Bram’s 
arms. 

“ Come, come, we can’t leave you lying here,” said Bram, 
in a deep, vibrating voice, as he hugged the dying head to 
his breast. 

He had succeeded in getting the poor, wounded, mangled 
body from the line itself to the comparative safety of the 
space between that row of metals and the next. More 


THE FIRE GOES OUT. 


169 


than this he dared not attempt until further help came. 
He sent the workman to the office with directions that he 
should send in search of a surgeon the first person he met 
on the way. He was then to break the news, not to Mr. 
Cornthwaite himself, if he were still there, but to one of 
the managers or to one of the older clerks. 

The man went away, and Christian, who had lain so still 
for some seconds that Bram feared he was past help 
already, opened his eyes. 

“ Hallo, Bram,” said he, in a very weak, faint, and broken 
voice, but with something like his old cheerfulness of 
manner. “ It’s odd that I should peg out here, in the 
very thick of the smoke and the grime I’ve always hated 
so much, isn’t it ? ” 

Bram could not speak for a minute. When he did, it 
was in a ferocious growl. 

“Don’t talk of pegging out, Mr. Christian,” said he. 
“ You don’t want to give in yet, eh ? ” 

He spoke like this, not that he had the slightest hope 
left, but because he wished to keep in the fiicker of life as 
long as he could, at least until the father could exchange 
one last hand-clasp with his dying son. And Bram 
judged that hope was the best stimulant he could admin- 
ister. But Chris only smiled ever so faintly. 

Oh, Bram, you don’t really think it would be worth 
while to rig me up with a pair of wooden legs, do you ? 
I shouldn’t be much like myself, should I? And the 
guv’nor wouldn’t have to complain of my running after 
the girls any more, would he ? ” 

Bram shivered. These light words had a terrible import 
now, and they sent his thoughts back from the sufferer to 
the author of the outrage. He glanced round instinctively, 
and an involuntary sound escaped his lips as he saw, 
standing on the edge of the network of lines, only a few 
feet from himself and Chris, the figure of Claire. 

With head bent and hands clasped, she stood, neither 
moving nor uttering a sound, but watching the two men 
with wild eyes, and with a look of unspeakable, stony, 
horror on her gray white face. 


170 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


Chris looked up, caught sight other, and uttered ^ cry. 

“ Claire ! Claire ! ” he called, in a voice hoarse and 
unlike his own. 

She did not move, did not seem to hear him. 

Then Bram called to her. 

“ Come. He wants you to come.” 

At the sound of Bram’s voice she looked up suddenly, 
shivered, and came slowly nearer. 

“ Look out ! Take care ! Come here between the 
lines ! ” said Bram. 

She obeyed his directions mechanically, stumbling as 
she came. When she found herself beside the two men, 
she fell to trembling violently, but without shedding a 
single tear. 

Chris tried to raise himself, and Bram lifted him up so 
that he could meet her eyes. 

“ Claire ! ” said the dying man in a whisper, “ come 
here. Don’t look down. Look at my face — my face.” 

But her eyes had seen enough of the nature of the 
injuries he had received to render her for a few moments 
absolutely powerless to move. She seemed not even to 
hear his voice, but stood beside him without uttering a 
sound, possessed by a horror unspeakable, indescribable. 
Christian tried to speak in a louder voice to distract her 
attention from his injuries, to draw it upon himself. 

“Claire,” said he, “remember I haven’t much time. 
Stoop down, kneel down ; listen to what I have to say.” 

There was a short silence. At last her eyes moved ; 
she drew a long breath. She looked at his face, and the 
tears began to stream down her cheeks. 

“ Oh, Chris, Chris ! ” she sobbed out in a voice almost 
inaudible. “It is too awful, too horrible! Oh, won’t 
you, can’t you — get well ? ” 

“ No, no,” said he impatiently. “ Surely you can’t 
wish it ! I want to speak to you, Claire ; you can’t pre- 
vent my saying what I like now, can you ? ” 

She only answered by a sob, as she sank down on her 
knees beside him. Bram, in an agony of uneasiness — for 
the space between the lines where they all three were 


THE FIRE GOES OUT. 


171 


was a narrow one, and another train might pass at any 
minute, and shake the little life there was remaining in 
Christian out of his maimed body — kept watch a few feet 
away. He was afraid of some rash movement on the 
part of the miserable, grief-stricken girl, whom he believed 
to be suffering such agonies of remorse as to be incapable 
of controlling herself if an emergency should arise. He 
could hear the voice of Christian as he whispered into 
Claire’s ear; he even caught the sense of what he said, 
with a terrible sense of gnawing sorrow for the wasted 
life that was ebbing so fast away. 

“ I’ve been a fool, Claire, the biggest fool in the world,” 
said Christian, still in the old easy tones, though his 
voice was no longer that which had raised the spirits of 
his friends by the very sound of it. “ If I hadn’t been a 
fool, I should have taken B ram’s advice and married you. 
I know you didn’t want me; I believe you liked old 
Bram better; but that wouldn’t have mattered. You’d 
have had to marry me if I’d made up my mind you 
should.” 

“ Oh, Chris, don’t tell me. It’s too horrible ! ” 

“No, it isn’t horrible to talk about it, to me, at least. 
And you have to let a fellow be selfish when he’s only 
got a few minutes to live. If I’d married you, I should 
have been happy, even if you hadn’t been. You’re the 
only girl I ever really cared about. Claire — yes, you 
can’t stop me, and it’s no use talking about my wife, 
because the only consolation I have in this business is 
the knowledge that I can’t ever see her again ! I loathe 
her ! I know I ought to have found it out sooner, but 
I’ve been punished for that mistake with the rest.” 

He stopped, his voice having gradually grown weaker 
and weaker. Bram turned quickly, and came down to 
him. But the moment Claire put her hand under his 
head he raised it again, and a faint tinge of color came 
into his cheeks. 

“ Kiss me, Claire,” said he. 

For a moment, to the surprise and indignation of Bram, 
she seemed to hesitate. Then she obeyed, putting her 


172 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


lips to Christian’s forehead, after a vain attempt to check 
her tears. Then there was a silence. They heard the 
voices of Mr. Cornthwaite and another man asking — 
“Where? Where is he?” And Christian opened his 
eyes. 

“ Bram,” said he, in a voice which betrayed agitation, 
“ take her away. Don’t let my father see her. Take her 
away. Never mind leaving me. Quick.” 

But there was no time. Mr. Cornthwaite was already 
close to the group. He touched Claire, and shrank back 
with an exclamation of horror and disgust. Bram seized 
her arm, and almost lifted her from the spot where she 
stood, dazed and incapable of movement. She, however, 
was evidently unconscious both of Mr. Cornthwaite’s 
touch and of his utterance. She was like a bewildered 
child in Bram’s hands, and she allowed him to lead her 
across the lines, obeying his smallest injunction with 
perfect, unresisting docility. 

When he had brought her to a place of safety within 
the works, he turned to her. 

“ I want to go back to him,” he said. “ It will only be 
for a moment, I’m afraid. Then I’ll come back and take 
you home. Will you wait for me? ” 

“Yes,” she answered in the same obedient manner, as 
if his wish were a command. 

He looked search i ugly into her face. In mercy, it 
seemed to Bram, a cloud had settled on her mind ; the 
terrible events of the past half-hour had become a blank 
to her. The little creature, who had been a passionate 
fury such a short time ago, had changed into the most 
helpless, the most docile, of living things. Did she under- 
stand what it was that she had done ? Did she realize 
that it was her own act which had killed her cousin? 
Bram could not believe it. He gave one more look into 
her white face, hardly daring to tell himself what the 
outcome of this terrible scene would be for her, and then 
he left her, and went back across the rails to the spot 
where he had quitted his friend. 

They had raised him from the ground in spite of his 


CLAIRE’S CONFESSION. 


173 


protests, and were bearing him by his father’s orders into 
the shelter of the works. When they stopped, and laid 
him down on a couch which had been hastily made with 
coats and sacks, he was so much exhausted that it was 
not until they had forced a few drops of brandy down 
his throat that he was able to speak again. Then he 
only uttered one word — 

“ Bram ! ” 

“ Elshaw, he wants you ! ” cried Mr. Cornthwaite, who 
was leaning over his son, with haggard eyes. 

Bram came forward. Christian put out his right hand 
very feebly, let it rest for a moment in Bram’s, which he 
faintly tried to press, and looked into his face with glaz- 
ing eyes. Bram, holding the hand firmly in a warm, 
strong grip, knew when the life went out of it. Even 
before the hand fell back, and the eyes closed, he knew 
that the fingers he held were those of a dead man. 


CHAPTER XXII. 
claiee’s confession. 

Beam held the hand of his dead friend for some min- 
utes, not daring to tell the father that all was over. But 
Mr. Cornthwaite suddenly became aware of the truth, 
lie started to his feet with a cry, beckoning to the doctor, 
who had stepped back a few paces, knowing that he'could 
do nothing more. 

“ He has fainted again ! ” cried Mr. Cornthwaite. But 
Bram knew that the unhappy man was only trying to de- 
ceive himself. The doctor’s look, as he knelt down once 
more by the body of Christian, made Mr. Cornthwaite 
turn abruptly away. Bram, who had stepped back in his 
turn, carried that scene in his eyes for weeks afterwards 
— the shed where they all stood, the silent machinery 
making odd shapes in the background. The dead body 
of Christian on the ground, with his face upturned, the 
crowd of figures around, all very still, very silent, the 
only two whose movements broke up the picture being 


174 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


Mr. Cornthwaite and the doctor. A flaring gas jet above 
their heads showed up the white face of the dead man, 
the grave and anxious countenances of the rest. 

Quite suddenly there appeared in the group another 
flgure — that of Claire. They all stared at her in silence. 
She seemed, Bram thought, to be absolutely unconscious 
of what had happened until she caught sight of the body 
of her cousin. Then, with a low cry, like a long sob, she 
put her hands to her face, covering her eyes, turned 
quickly, and ran away. 

Mr. Cornthwaite, however, had seen her, and, his face 
darkening with terrible anger, he followed her rapidly 
with an oath. Anxious and alarmed, Bram followed in 
his turn. The girl had not much of a start, and although 
she was fleet of foot, Mr. Cornthwaite, with his superior 
knowledge of the works, gained upon her rapidly, and 
would have seized her roughly by the arm if Bram had 
not interposed his own person between them, giving the 
girl an opportunity of escape, of which she availed herself 
with great adroitness. 

“ Elshaw ! ” cried Mr. Cornthwaite in astonishment. 
A moment later he went on in a transport of anger — 
“How dare you stop me? You have let her getaway, 
you have helped her, the vile wretch who has killed my 
son ! But don’t think that she shall escape punishment. 
You can’t save her ; nobody shall. She has murdered my 
son, and ” 

“ Not murdered, sir,” cried Bram quickly. “ It was an 
accident — a ghastly accident. The girl is dazed with what 
has happened. She hardly knows herself. Pray, don’t 
speak to her now. It is inhuman — inhuman. She is suf- 
fering more than even you can do. Give her a chance to 
recover herself before you speak to her.” 

Mr. Cornthwaite freed himself with a jerk from Bram’s 
restraining hand. But Claire had disappeared. 

“ Well, she’s got away this time, but your interference 
won’t save her much longer. My son — to be killed — by a 
jade like that ! My God ! My God ! ” 

He had broken down quite suddenly, overcome by an 


CLAIRE’S CONFESSION. 


175 


overwhelming sense of his loss. Although he had never 
been a very tender or a very indulgent father, he had loved 
his son more than he himself knew. He recognized, now 
that Christian lay dead, what hopes, what ambitions had 
been bound up in him. Even the works, the true darling 
of his heart, seemed suddenly to become a mere worthless 
’ toy when he realized that with himself would die the in- 
terest of his family in the enterprise he had founded. He 
had imagined that he should see his descendants sitting 
in his own place in the office, carrying on the work he had 
begun. Now, in one short hour, his hopes and dreams 
were demolished. Nothing was left to him but revenge 
upon the woman who had taken the color out of his life 
by killing his son. 

Bram was awed by the depth of his so suddenly mani- 
fested despair. He felt with a most true instinct that 
there were no words in the human tongue which could do 
any good to the miserable man. He could only stand by, 
in solemn silence, while Mr. Cornthwaite put his head 
down between his hands, drawing long sobbing breaths of 
grief and despair. 

But presently the doctor, who was an old friend of Mr. 
Cornthwaite’s, came in search of him, and put his hand 
through his arm. Then Bram stole quietly away, and 
went in search of poor Claire. 

He had not to go far. He had not, indeed, walked twenty 
paces, when, turning a corner among the innumerable 
buildings which formed the great works, he came upon 
her, standing, like a lost child, with her arms down at her 
sides, and her head bent a little downwards. As soon as 
he appeared she turned to accompany him without a word, 
much as a dog does that has been waiting for its master. 

This change in the spirited girl to such a helpless, docile 
creature, frightened Bram even more than it touched him. 
He felt that some great, some awful change, must have 
taken place in the girl who was too proud to allow him to 
enter her father’s house. Was it the feeling of the awful 
thing she had done, of the vengeance she had drawn down 
upon herself which had brought about the change ? 


176 


FOUGE AND FURNACE. 


He could not see her face. She walked beside him in 
silence till they came to the gate of the works, and there 
she stopped for a moment to look through the door by 
which Christian had come out with her an hour before 
And then in the gaslight Bram saw her face at last, read 
the very thoughts which were passing in her mind — 
remembrance, remorse — the horror of it all. But she 
uttered no word, no cry. With a shudder she passed out, 
putting her hands up to her eyes as if to shut out the 
terrible pictures her brain conjured up. 

Bram followed her, at first without speaking. She did 
not seem to know that he was beside her ; at least she never 
looked at him, never spoke to him. He, on his side, while 
longing to say some kindly word, was afraid of waking 
her old pride, of being told to go about his business, if he 
broke the spell of silence which hung over them both. 

So, as silent as the dead, they walked on side by side 
through the crowded streets, with the groups of rough 
factory hands, of grinders, of lassies with shawls round 
their heads, extending far over the road. A drizzling rain 
had begun to fall, and the stones of the streets were slimy, 
slippery and black. Claire went straight on through the 
crowds, threading her way deftly enough, but mechanic- 
ally, and without turning her head. Bram following 
always. A vivid remembrance flashed into his mind of 
the previous occasion on which he liad followed her, when 
Mr. Cornthwaite had told him to see her home from Holme 
Park, and she had dashed out of the house like an arrow 
to escape the infliction. Unconscious of his proximity she 
had been then ; unconscious she seemed to be now. 

When she reached the hill near the summit of which 
the farmhouse stood, however, her strength seemed sud- 
denly to desert her ; the slight, over-taxed frame became 
momentarily unequal to its task, and she staggered against 
the stone wall which fenced the field she had to pass 
through. Then Bram came up, and, after standing beside 
her a few moments without speaking, and without elicit- 
ing a word from her, he drew her hand through his arm, 
and led her onwards up the hill. 


CLAIRE’S CONFESSION. 


177 


It was now dark, with the pitchy blackness of a wet, 
moonless night. The ground was slippery with rain, and 
the ascent would have been toilsome in the extreme to the 
girl’s weary little body but for Bram’s timely help. So 
tired was she that before they reached the farmhouse gates 
Bram put his arm round her waist, and more than half- 
carried her without a word of protest. 

There was no light in the front of the farmhouse ; but 
when they got to the gate of the farmyard, through which it 
was Claire’s custom to enter, they saw a light in the kitchen 
window ; and when they opened the door Joan jumped up 
from a seat near the big deal table. 

“ Eh, Miss Claire, but Ah thowt ye was lost ! ” cried 
she. Then at once realizing that something untoward 
had happened, she glanced at Bram, who shook his head 
to intimate that she had better ask no questions. 

“Where’s my father?” asked Claire at once, drawing 
her arm away from that of Bram, and stopping short in 
the middle of the floor at the same time. 

“ He’s gone oop to t’ Park,” said Joan, with a look at 
Bram as much as to say there was no help for it, and the 
truth must come out. 

Claire, sinking on the nearest chair, uttered a short, 
hollow laugh. 

Joan, who had been waiting with her bonnet on for 
Claire’s return, hardly knew what to do. She saw that 
the young girl was ill and desperately tired, and, on the 
other hand, she was anxious to get back to her own good- 
man and to her little ones. In her perplexity she looked 
at Bram, the faithful friend, whom she was heartily glad 
to see admitted again. 

“ Ah doan’t suppose Mr. Biron’ll be long coming back,” 
she said. “ If Ah was to make ye both a coop o’ tea, 
Mr. Elshaw, and then run back to my home for an hour, 
would you stay here till Ah coom back ? Ah’d give a 
look in to see all was reght. She doan’t look as if she 
ought to spend t’ neght by herself.” 

This was said in a low voice to Bram, whom she had 
beckoned to the door of the back kitchen, while Claire 
12 


178 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


remained in the same attitude of deep depression at the 
table. 

“ Ko,” said he at once. “ She mustn’t be left alone to- 
night. I’ll stay till you come back, whether her father 
comes back before then or not. She’s had a great shock — 
an awful shock. But,” and he glanced back at the 
motionless girl, “ I won’t tell you about it now. And 
you can go now. You needn’t trouble about the tea; I’ll 
make it.” 

Joan looked at him, and then at Claire with round, 
apprehensive eyes. 

“Will she let ye stay?” she asked, in a dubious 
whisper. 

“Poor child, yes. She’s almost forgotten who I 
am.” 

But Claire had lifted up her head, and was rising to 
come towards them. Bram dismissed Joan by a look, 
and she slipped out by the back way, and left the two 
together. 

Claire followed Joan with dull eyes as the good woman, 
with a series of affectionate little smiles and nods, went 
out, shutting the door behind her. Then she remained 
staring at the closed door, while Bram, without taking 
any notice of her, went quietly across to the cupboard 
where the tea was kept, took out the tea-caddy, and put 
the kettle on the fire to boil. She did not interrupt him, 
and when he glanced at her again he saw that she had 
sunk down again in her chair, and had dropped her head 
heavily upon her hands, leaning on the table drowsily. 

Presently she made a little moaning noise, and began 
to move her head restlessly from side to side. Bram put 
a cup of tea down in front of her, and said gently — 

“ Got a headache. Miss Claire ? ” 

She raised her head as if it was a weight too heavy for 
her to lift without difficulty. 

“ Oh, Bram, it’s so bad, worse than I’ve ever had be- 
fore,” said she plaintively. 

In her eyes there was no longer any grief ; only a dull 
sense of great physical pain. She seemed to have for- 


CLAIRE’S CONFESSION. 179 

gotten everything but that burning, leaden weight at her 
own temples. 

“ Will you drink this, and then lie down for a little 
while ? ” asked he. 

With the same absolute docility that she had shown to 
him all the evening, she took the cup from his hands, 
and tried to drink. But she seemed unable to swallow, 
and in a few moments he had to take it from her, lest her 
trembling hands should let it drop on the floor. 

“ Now, you had better lie down,” said he. “ Come into 
the drawing-room ; there’s a Are there. I saw it flicker- 
ing as we came along. If you lie down on the sofa till 
Joan comes back, she’ll take you upstairs and put you to 
bed.” 

He saw that she had no strength left to do anything 
for herself. She got up as obediently as ever ; but when 
she reached the door a flt of shivering seized her. She 
staggered, fell back, and whispered as Bram caught 
her — 

“No. Don’t make me go in there. Let me stav 
here.” 

There was an old broken-down horsehair covered sofa 
against the wall in the big kitchen, and Bram hastened 
to make it as comfortable as he could by bringing the 
cushions from the drawing-room. Before he had finished 
his preparations she complained of feeling giddy ; and no 
longer doubting that she was on the verge of being 
seriously ill, Bram led her to the sofa, and going quickly 
to the outer door looked out in hope of finding some one 
whom he could send for the doctor. He was unsuccess- 
ful, however; the rain was coming down more heavily 
than ever, and there was not a living creature in sight. 
The farm hands lived in the cottages at the top of the 
hill, and Bram did not dare to leave Claire by herself now 
that the torpor in which she had come home was begin- 
ning to give place to a feverish restlessness. So he shut 
the door, and seeing that Claire’s eyes were closed, he 
began to hope that she had fallen asleep, and crossed 
the floor with very soft steps to his old place by the fire. 


180 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


A strange vigil this ! By the side of the woman who 
had been so much to him, who, even now that she had 
lost the lofty place she had once held in his imagination, 
seemed to have crept in so doing even closer into his 
heart. So, at least, the chivalrous man felt now that, by 
an act of mad, inconceivable folly and rashness, Claire 
had endangered her own liberty, and perhaps even her 
life. For that Mr. Cornthwaite would press his convic- 
tion that the act was murder Bram could not doubt. 
Hating the very sound of the girl’s name as he had long 
done, believing that Christian’s attachment for her had 
been the cause of his estrangement from his wife, of his 
entire ruin, it was not likely that he, a hard man natu- 
rally, would flinch in his pursuit of the woman to whom 
he imputed so much evil. 

And Bram hardly blamed him for it. He would not 
have had him feel the loss of his son one whit less than 
he did ; he knew what pangs those must be which pierecd 
the heart of the bereaved father. Bram himself felt for 
both of them; for Mr. Cornthwaite and for Claire. Her 
he excused in the full belief that her sufferings had 
brought on an attack of frenzy in which she was wholly 
unaccountable for her actions. How else was it possible 
to explain the bewildered horror of her look and attitude 
when called to Christian’s side by the dying man himself? 
And had not Chris, in his words, in his manner to her, 
absolved her from all blame ? Not one word of reproach 
had he uttered, even while he lay dying a fearful death 
as the result of her frenzied attack ! Surely there was 
exoneration of her m this fact ? Bram felt that this was 
the point he must press upon the aggrieved father. 

As this thought passed through his mind, and instantly 
became a resolve, Bram raised his head quickly, and was 
struck with something like horror to find that Claire was 
sitting up, resting her whole body on her arms, and 
staring at him with glittering eyes. 

As these met his own astonished look, she smiled at 
him with a strange sweetness which made him suddenly 
want to spring up and take her in his arms. Instead of 


CLAIRE’S CONFESSION. 


181 


that, he rose slowly, and advancing towards the sofa with 
a hesitating, creeping step, asked gently if she wanted 
anything. 

She shook her head, smiling still ; and then she put out 
one hand to him. He took it ; the skin was hot and dry. 
Her lips, he now perceived, looked dry and parched. 

“ Bram,” she said in her old voice, bright and soft and 
clear, “ I forget. What day is it we are to be married ? ” 

Bram stood beside her, holding her hand, such a terrible 
rush of mingled feelings thronging, surging into his heart 
that he was as incapable of speech as if he had been a 
dumb man. She looked at him with the same gentle 
smile, inquiringly. Presently, as he still kept silence, she 
said — 

“ It seems a strange thing to have forgotten. But was 
it Tuesday ? ” 

Bram nodded slowly, as if the head he bent had been 
weighted with lead. Then she drew her hand out of his 
with a contented sigh, and fell back on the couch. Again 
she closed her eyes, and again Bram, who was in a tumult 
of feelings he could not have described, of which the 
dominant was pain, cruel, inextinguishable pain, hoped 
that she was asleep. He sat down on a chair near her, 
and watched her face. It w^as perfectly calm, peaceful, 
and sweet for some minutes. Then a slight look of trouble 
came over it, and she opened her eyes again. 

“ Bram,” she called out in a voice of alarm. Then per- 
ceiving him close to her, she drew a breath of relief, and 
stretched out her hand to him. “ It’s so strange,” she 
went on, with glittering eyes. “ Whenever I shut my eyes 
I have horrible dreams of papa, always papa ! Where is 
he? Is he here? Is he safe?” 

Bram patted her hot, twitching hand reassuringly. 

“ He is quite safe, I’ve no doubt,” he said. “ He’s gone 
out, and he hasn’t come back yet.” 

Claire stared at him inquiringly, and frowned as if in 
perplexity. 

“But what has happened?” she asked. “Why does 
everything seem so strange ? Your voice, and the ticking 


182 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


of the clock, and my own voice too — they sound quite 
different ! And my head — oh, it aches so ! Have I been 
ill? Where’s Joan?” 

She wandered on thus so quickly from one subject to 
another that Bram was saved the trouble of finding 
answers to any of her questions except the last. 

“ Joan will be back in a little while,” said he. “ She’s 
gone home to see to her children. “ But she won’t be 
long.” 

“ Is she coming back to-night ? Why is she coming 
back to-night ? ” 

“ Well, to look after you.” 

“ Then I have been ill ? ” 

“ You’re not very well now,” said Bram gently. 

« Why not ? Something has happened ? Won’t you 
tell me what it is ? ” 

There was a pause. Then she gave his hand an affection- 
ate, clinging pressure. 

“Nevermind, Bram. You needn’t tell me unless you 
like. I don’t mind anything when you’re here. You 
won’t go away, will you ? ” 

The loving tone, the caressing manner, stirred his heart 
to the depths. Surely this tender trust was her own real 
feeling for him, suddenly revealed, free from all restraints 
of prudence, of necessary coldness. What did it mean ? 
Was this the woman who had ruined her life for another 
man, this girl who looked at him with innocent eyes full 
of love, who seemed to be thrilled with pleasure at the 
touch of his fingers? Was this the woman who had 
struggled with Christian in the shadow of the great works 
two hours before, whose mad passion of hate and revenge 
had given her fragile limbs power to fiing him down on 
the railway line? Bram sat in a state of wild revolt from 
the terrible ideas, which had, indeed, till that moment 
seemed real, inevitable enough. What was the miracle 
that had happened ? What was the explanation of it all ? 
While he still asked himself those questions, with his 
head on fire, his heart nigh to bursting, the soft, girlish 
voice spoke again. 


CLAIRE’S CONFESSION. 


183 


“ Bram, what was the difficulty ? There was a difficulty, 
wasn’t there ? Only I can’t remember what it was. Why 
was it that you stayed away ? That you didn’t come here 
as you used to? You don’t know what a long time it 
seemed, and how I used to long for you to come back 
again ! Why, I used to watch for you when I knew it 
was time for you to go past, and I used to kiss my hand 
to you behind the curtains, so that you couldn’t see me ! 
But why — why didn’t I want you to see me, Bram ? I 
can’t remember.” 

“ Oh, my darling ! ” burst from Bram’s lips in spite of 
himself. 

That one word was answer enough for her. She smiled 
happily up into his face, and closed her eyes, as if it hurt 
her to keep them open, the lids falling heavily. Bram 
wished — he almost prayed — that they could both die that 
moment ; that neither might ever have to live through the 
terrible time which was in store for them. The delirium 
which had so mercifully descended upon her overwrought 
mind had shut out the horrible secrets of the past from 
Claire. 

As Bram sat, as still as a statue lest he should disturb 
her by a movement, he heard the sound of footsteps outside, 
and a moment later the door was burst open, and Mr. 
Biron, pale, haggard, dripping with rain, begrimed with 
mud, a horrible spectacle of fear and terror, stole into the 
room, and shutting the door, bolted it, and then sank in a 
heap on the floor, with his eyes turned in a ghastly panic 
of alarm towards the window. 


184 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 

Bram was struck by the entire change which had taken 
place in Theodore Biron, a change which had, indeed, 
been creeping over him ever since Meg’s attack, and his 
consequent disfigurement, but which seemed to have 
culminated to-night in what was almost a transforma- 
tion. 

As he crouched on the fioor, and looked anxiously up 
at the window, there was no trace in the cowering, shriv- 
elled figure, in the scarred, infiamed face, out of which 
the bloodshot eyes peered in terror, of the gay, easy-man- 
nered country gentleman en amateur^ who had impressed 
Bram so strongly with his airy lightness of heart only 
sixteen months before. 

“ Lock the door, Bram,” said he, presently, in a hoarse 
voice when he suddenly became conscious of the young 
man’s presence. “ Lock the door ! ” 

Bram hastened to do so. He wanted to open it first to 
look out and see who it was that had inspired Mr. Biron 
with so much alarm. But Theodore restrained him by a 
violent gesture. 

“ Lock it, lock it ! ” repeated he, as, evidently relieved 
to find a man in the house, he got up from the fioor, and 
went with shivering limbs and chattering teeth towards 
the fire. “ And now bolt the shutters— quick— and then 
on the other side ! ” 

He indicated with a nod the front of the house, but 
when Bram walked towards the door he shuflaed after him, 
as if afraid of being left alone. Bram turned to cast a 
glance at the sofa and its occupant before leaving the 
room. Theodore, in a state of nervous alarm which made 
him watch every look, glanced back also. On seeing his 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 185 

daughter lying back with closed eyes on the cushions, he 
uttered a cry. 

“ Claire, oh, oh, what will become of her ? What will 
become of me ? ” 

And, utterly broken down, he covered his face with his 
shivering hands, and sobbed loudly. 

Brain wondered if he had heard all. 

“Come, come, be a man, Mr. Biron,” said he. “What 
is it you’re afraid of ? ” 

“ That sh — she — devil who — who half-blinded me, who 
threw that stuff over me ! ” sobbed Theodore. “ She’s 
followed me — from Holme Park — I managed to dodge her 
among the trees of the park ; but she knows where I live. 
She’ll come here, I know she will.” Suddenly he drew 
himself up, in another spasm of fear. “ See that the door 
is locked in the front, and the windows — see to them ! ” 
cried he, with a burst of energy. 

“All right,” said Bram. “I’ll see to that. You stay 
here with her,” and he indicated Claire with a movement 
of the head. 

But Mr. Biron shrank into himself, and tried to follow 
Bram out. 

“ I’m afraid of her ! She’s gone mad ; I know she has,” 
whispered he. “ Haven’t you heard what she did to-night 
— down at the works ? ” 

And Theodore, whose face had in a moment gone ashy 
white, all but the inflamed patch on the left side, which 
had become a livid blue, crept closer still to Bram. But 
the young man’s face as he again looked towards the 
unconscious girl wore nothing but infinite pitj^ infinite 
tenderness. 

“You’re right, Mr. Biron. The poor child is mad, I 
believe,” he said gravely. “And, thank God, she hasn’t 
come to herself yet. One could almost wish,” he added, 
more to himself than to his companion, “ that she never 
may.” 

Mr. Biron shuddered. 

“Do you mean that she is ill?” he asked querulously. 

“Yes, she’s very ill— delirious ” 


186 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


Mr. Biron shot right out of the room into the hall with 
all his old agility. He was evidently as much afraid of 
his unhappy daughter as he was of Meg herself. 

“Oh, these women, these women! They never can 
keep their heads ! ” moaned he. “ And just when I’m as 
ill as I can be myself ! I’ve been shivering all the way 
home, I have, indeed, Elshaw.” 

Bram, who had left the door of the kitchen open so that 
he might be within hearing of a possible call or cry from 
Claire, was locking the front door and barring the shutters 
of the windows in deference to Mr. Biron’s wish. 

He was too much used to Theodore’s utter selfishness to 
feel more than a momentary pang of disgust at this most 
recent manifestation of it. He was sorry for the poor 
wretch, whose prospects were certainly now as gloomy as 
he deserved. He recommended him to go upstairs and 
change his wet things, promising to come up and see 
him as soon as Joan arrived. And Mr. Biron, though at 
first exceedingly reluctant to move a step by himself, 
ended by preferring this alternative to returning to the 
room where his unconscious daughter lay. 

He detained Bram for a few moments, however, to tell 
him of his adventures at Holme Park. 

“ When I got there, Bram, I was told that my brother- 
in-law was out. But as I had very particular business 
with him, I said I would wait. Well, you may hardly 
believe it, but they didn’t want even to let me do that. 
But I insisted ; a desperate man will do much, and I made 
such a noise that Hester came out, and told the wretched 
creature who was refusing me admittance that I was to 
be let in. Well, I was wet through then, and they left 
me in a room with hardly any fire. And, would you be- 
lieve it, the wretched man had the impudence to lock up 
my brother-in-law’s desk before my eyes ! It was an in- 
tentional insult, Elshaw, inflicted upon me just because I 
am not able to keep up a big establishment of useless, in- 
solent creatures like himself ! But these people never will 
understand that there is anything in the world to be 
respected except money ! And, after all, can one blame 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 187 

them when their masters and mistresses are no better ? 
It’s all money, money, with Josiah Cornthwaite ! ” 

Bram, who was anxious to get back to the kitchen that 
he might keep watch over Claire, cut him short. 

“ Well, and Mr. Cornthwaite ? He arrived at last ?” 

Theodore’s face fell at the remembrance. 

“ Ye-es, and I shall never forget what he did, what he 
said. He came into the room with glaring eyes — ’pon my 
soul, I thought he had been bitten by a mad dog, Elshaw ! 
He flew at me, showing his teeth. He shook me till my 
teeth chattered ; he called me all the names he could think 
of that had anything brutal and opprobrious in the sound. 
He told me my daughter had killed his son, murdered 
him ; and he said that he would get her penal servitude if 
they didn’t bring it in what it was — murder ! What do 
you think of that ? What do you think of that ? And I, 
in my weak state, to hear it ! I give you my word, 
Elshaw, I never thought I should get home alive ! ” 

There was a pause. Mr. Biron wiped his face. His 
hands were shaking ; his voice was tremulous and hoarse. 
He looked as pitiful a wretch as it was possible to imagine. 

« Did he tell you — how it happened ? ” asked Bram in a 
low voice. 

He was hoping, always hoping against hope, that some 
new fact would come to light which would shift the blame 
of the awful catastrophe from Claire’s poor little shoulders. 
But Mr. Biron had no comfort for him. 

“ Yes,” sobbed he. “ He told me she had gone down to 
the works to see her cousin ” 

“ Ah, if she had only not done that ! Not been forced 
to do that,” broke from Bram’s lips. 

Theodore grew suddenly quiet, and stared at him ap- 
prehensively. 

“ How was she forced to do it ? ” he asked querulously. 

But Bram did not answer. 

“Well, yes. What else did Mr. Cornthwaite say?” 
asked he. 

“ And that they quarrelled close to the railway line. 
And that she — she — ’pon my soul, I can’t see how it’s 


188 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


possible — a little bit of a girl like that! He says she 
dragged Christian down, and flung him in front of a 
train that was coming along ! Of course, we know that 
woman is an incomprehensible creature ; but how one of 
only five feet high could throw down a young man of 
stoutish build like Christian is more than even I, with 
all my experience of the sex, can understand ! ” 

Bram was frowning, deep in thought. Again he did 
not make any answer. 

“ That’s all I heard. Have you learnt any more partic- 
ulars yourself, Elshaw?” 

“ I was there,” replied Bram simply. 

This gave Mr. Biron a great shock. He began to shiver 
again, and subsided from the buoyant manner he had be- 
gun to assume into the terror-stricken attitude of a few 
minutes before. He turned to clutch the banisters to 
help him upstairs. 

“Well,” said he in a complaining voice, as he began to 
drag himself up, “ if she did it, that’s no reason why 
everybody should be down upon me ! Meg Tyzack, too ! 
A fury like that ! What right has she to follow me, to 
persecute me?” 

“ The poor creature’s had her brain turned, I think, by 
— by the treatment she’s received,” said Bram. 

“ But I had no hand in the treatment ! She has no 
right to visit Christian’s follies and vices upon me ! Me ! 
And yet, when I came out of the house at Holme Park, 
and I came upon her on her way up to it, she turned out 
of her way to go shrieking after me ! There’s no reason 
in such behavior, even if she is off her head 1 ” 

“Well, there’s just this, Mr. Biron, that she knows you 
used to encourage Christian to come to your house, and 
to urge Claire to go and meet him,” said Bram sturdily, 
disgusted with the airs of martyrdom which the worst 
of fathers was assuming. “ And there’s enough of a 
thread of reason in that, especially for one whose mind is 
not at its best.” 

To Brara’s great surprise, these words had such an 
effect upon Theodore that he said nothing in reply, 


FATHER AND DAUGHTER. 


189 


but with an unintelligible murmur shufiSed upstairs at 
once. 

Bram felt rather remorseful when he saw how the little 
man took his words to heart, and wondered whether he 
was less easy in his mind than he affected to he. He re- 
turned to the kitchen, where Claire was sitting up on the 
sofa listening intently. 

“Who’s that?” she said in a husky voice of alarm. 

Bram, who had heard nothing, listened too. And then 
he found that her ears were keener than his own, for in 
another moment there came Joan’s heavy rap-tap-tap on 
the door. 

He let her in, and saw at once that she had heard some- 
thing of the occurrences of the evening. Her good- 
natured face was pale and alarmed ; she looked at Claire 
with eloquent eyes. 

“ Oh, sir, do you think it’s true ? ” she asked in an 
agitated whisper. “That she did it, that our poor, little 
Miss Claire killed him, killed Mr. Chris ? ” 

“ Don’t let us think about it,” said he quickly. “ It was 
nothing but a shocking accident, if she did ; of that you 
may be sure.” 

“ But will they be able to prove that?” asked the good 
woman anxiously. 

“ W e’ll hope they may,” said he gravely. “ In the mean- 
time she’s so ill that she can tell us nothing ; she’s for- 
gotten all about it. You must get her upstairs.” 

Joan set about this task with only the delay caused by 
the necessity of lighting a fire in the invalid’s bedroom. 
Claire meanwhile remained silent, keeping her eyes fixed 
upon Bram with an intent gaze which touched him by 
its pathetic lack of meaning. 

Not until Joan came back and put strong arms round 
the little creature to carry her upstairs did some ray of 
intelligence fiash out from the black eyes. 

“ No, don’t take me away,” she said. “ I want to stay 
here to talk to Bram.” 

And she stretched out feebly over Joan’s shoulder two 
little hands towards him. 


190 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


He took them in his, and pressed upon each of them a 
long, passionate kiss. 

“No, dear. It will be better for you,” he said simply. 

And then, with a sudden return to the extreme docility 
she had shown to him all the evening, she smiled, and let 
her hands and her head fall as Joan started with her 
burden on the way upstairs. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

MR. BIBON’s repentance. 

Then Bram went upstairs also, and knocked at Mr. 
Biron’s door. 

“ I’m going for the doctor now, Mr. Biron,” he called 
out without entering. “ I’ve come up to ask if there’s 
anything I can get for you before I go.” 

“ Come in, Elshaw, come in ! ” cried Theodore, in a voice 
full of tremulous eagerness. “ I want to speak to you.” 

Bram obeyed the summons, and found himself for the 
first time in Mr. Biron’s bedroom, which was the most 
luxurious room in the house. A bright fire burned in the 
grate, this being a luxury Theodore always indulged in 
during the winter ; the bed and the windows were hung 
with handsome tapestry, and there were book-shelves, 
tables, arm-chairs, everything that a profound study of 
the art of making oneself comfortable could suggest to 
the fastidious Theodore. 

He himself was sitting, wrapped in a cozy dressing- 
gown, with his feet on a hassock by the fire. But he 
looked even more wretched than he had done in his 
drenched clothes downstairs. There was an unhealthy 
fiush in his face, a feverish glitter in his eyes. 

Bram saw something in his face which he had never 
seen there before, something which suggested that the 
man had discovered a conscience, and that it was giving 
him uneasiness. 


MR. BIRON’S REPENTANCE. 


191 


“ Sit down,” said he, pointing to a seat on the other 
side of the fireplace. Bram wanted to go for the doctor, 
hut the little man was so peremptory that he thought it 
best to obey. “ Elshaw, I think I’m going to die.” 

He uttered the words, as was natural in such a man, 
as if the whole world must be struck into awe by the 
news. Bram inclined his head in respectful attention, 
clasping his hands and looking at the fire. He could not 
make light of this presentiment, which, indeed, he saw 
reason to think was a well-founded one. Mr. Biron’s 
never robust frame had been shaken sorely by his own 
excesses in the first place, by erysipelas and consequent 
complications, and it was evident that the experiences of 
this night had tried him very severely. He was still 
shivering in a sort of ague : his eyes were glassy, his skin 
was dry. He stood as much in need of a doctor’s aid as 
did his daughter. 

But still Bram waited, struck by the man’s manner, 
and feeling that at such a moment there was something 
portentous in his wish to speak. Mr. Biron had some- 
thing on his mind, on his conscience, of which he wanted 
to unburden himself. 

“ Elshaw,” he went on after a long pause, “ I’ve been 
to blame over this— this matter of Claire and— and her 
cousin Chris.” He stared into Bram’s face as if the young 
man had been his confessor, and rubbed his little white 
hands quickly the one over the other while he spoke. 
“I did it for the best, as I’m sure you will believe; I 
thought he was an honorable man, who would marry 
her and make her happy. You believe that, don’t 
you ? ” 

Up to this moment Bram had believed this of Theodore ; 
now for the first time it fiashed through his mind that it 
was not true. However, he made a vague motion of the 
head which Theodore took for assent, and the latter went 
on. He seemed to have become suddenly possessed by a 
spirit of self-abasement, to feel the need of opening his 
heart. 

“ There was no harm in my sending her to meet him — 


192 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


until — last night,” pursued the conscience-stricken man. 
“ I know I did wrong in letting her go then ! ” 

Bram sat up in his chair with horror in his eyes. 

“ You sent her ? Begging, of course, as usual ? ” 

The words were harsh enough, brutal, perhaps, in the 
circumstances. But Bram’s feeling was too strong for 
him to be able to choose the expression of it. That this 
father, knowing what he did know, suspecting what he 
did suspect, should have sent his daughter to ask Chris- 
tian for money was so shocking to his feelings that he 
was perforce frank to the utmost. 

“ What could I do ? How could I help it ? One has 
got to live, Claire as well as I ! ” muttered Theodore, 
avoiding Brain’s eyes, and looking at the fire. “ Besides, 
we don’t know anything. We may be doing her wrong 
in suspecting — what — what we did suspect,” said he 
earnestly, persuasively. “ She never told me that she 
went away with him, never ! I believe it’s a libel to say 
she did, the mere malicious invention of evilly-disposed 
persons to harm my child.” 

Bram was silent. These words chimed in so well with 
the hopes he would fain have cherished that, even from 
the lips of Mr. Biron, they pleased him in spite of his own 
judgment. Encouraged by the attitude which he was 
acute enough to perceive in his companion, Theodore 
went on — 

“No, you may blame me as much as you like. You 
have more to blame me for than you know. I’m going to 
tell you all about it — yes, all about it.” And he began to 
play nervously with his handkerchief, and to dart at 
Bram a succession of quick, restless glances. “ But I 
will hear nothing against my child. It’s not her fault 
that she’s the daughter of her father, is it ? But she’s 
not a chip of the old block, as you know, Elshaw.” 

Bram, who was getting anxious about leaving Claire so 
long without medical attention, got up from his chair. 
He did not feel inclined to encourage the evident desire 
of Mr. Biron for the luxury of confession, of self-abase- 
ment. Like most vain persons, Theodore was almost as 


MR. BIRON’S REPENTANCE. 


193 


willing to excite attention by the record of his mis- 
deeds as by any other way. And in the same way, when 
he felt inclined to write himself down a sinner, noth- 
ing would content him but to be the greatest sinner of 
them all. So he put up an imploring hand to detain 
Bram. 

“ Wait,” he said petulantly. “ Didn’t I say I had some- 
thing to tell you ? It’s something that concerns Claire, 
too.” 

At the mention of this name Bram, who had moved to- 
wards the door, stopped, although he was inclined to think 
that all this was a mere excuse on the part of Theodore to 
detain him, and put oif the moment when he should be left 
by himself. 

“ You remember that a box was sent to you — a chest, 
by the man at East Grindley who left you his money ? ” 

Bram nodded. His attention was altogether arrested 
now. Even before Mr. Biron uttered his next words it 
was clear that he had a real confession to make this time, 
that he was not merely filling up the time with idle self- 
accusations. 

“ I went to your lodging the day it came, just to see that 
it was safe. Your landlady had sent to ask me if I could 
take care of it for you, as it was something of value. But 
I preferred to leave the responsibility with her. In— in 
fact, Claire thought it best too.” 

Bram read between the lines here, knowing what strong 
reasons poor Claire would have for taking this view. Mr. 
Biron went on — 

“ There was a key sent with it.” 

Bram looked up. He had found no key, and had been 
obliged to force the padlock. 

“ The key was in a piece of paper. I found it on the 
mantelpiece. I — I — well, of course, I had no right to do 
it ; but I thought it would be better for me to look over 
the contents of the chest to make sure they were not tam- 
pered with in your absence.” 

Bram was attentive enough now. 

“ So I unlocked the box, and I just glanced through the 

13 


194 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


things it contained. You know what I found ; with the 
exception of this, that there was some loose cash ” 

Bram’s face grew red with sudden perception. But he 
made no remark. 

“ I forget exactly what it was, something between two 
and three hundred pounds. Now, I know that in strict 
propriety,” went on Mr. Biron, in whom the instinct of 
confession became suddenly tempered with a desire to 
prove himself to have acted well in the matter, “ I ought 
to have left the money alone. But it was strongly borne 
in upon me at the moment that my dear daughter was 
worried because of unpaid bills ; and — and that, in short, 
it would be just what you would wish me to do if you had 
been here, for me to borrow the loose sovereigns, and apply 
them to our pressing necessities. I argued with myself 
that you would even prefer, in your delicacy, that I should 
not have to ask for them. And — in short, I may have been 
wrong, but I — borrowed them.” 

A strange light had broken on Bram’s face. 

“ Did Miss Claire know ? ” he asked suddenly in a ring- 
ing voice. 

“ Well — er — yes, in point of fact she did. She came 
to look for me, and she, well, she saw me take them. 
She — in fact — wished me to put them back ; and I could 
not convince her that I was doing what you would have 
wished.” 

Bram’s brain was bursting. His heart was beating 
fast. He came quickly towards Mr. Biron, and seized 
him by the wrist. There was no anger in his eyes, 
nothing but a fierce, hungry hope. For he could not de- 
spise Theodore more than he had done before, while the 
fact of Claire’s shame on meeting himself might now 
bear a less awful significance then it had seemed to do. 

“ She knew you had taken it ? And you forced her to 
say nothing ? ” cried he in passionate eagerness. 

Mr. Biron was disconcerted. 

“Well, er — I thought that — that perhaps, until I could 
see my way to paying it back, it would be better 

But Bram did not wait for more explanations. Indeed, 


MR. BIRON’S REPENTANCE. 


195 


he needed no more. lie saw in a flash what the shame 
was which he had seen in Claire’s eyes when she met him 
after his return. It was the knowledge that her father 
was a thief, that he had robbed Bram himself, and that 
she could neither make restitution nor confession for him. 

And with this knowledge there flashed upon him the 
question — Was this the only shame she had to conceal? 
He was ready, passionately anxious, to believe that it 
was. 

Mr. Biron was quick to take advantage of this disposi- 
tion in Bram. Ilis mood of self-abasement seemed to 
have passed away as rapidly as it had come. Not 
attempting to draw his hand away from Bram’s grasp, 
he said buoyantly — 

“ Bat I could not let the matter rest. I felt that you 
might suspect her, my child, of what her father, from 
mistaken motives perhaps, had done ” 

Bram cut him short. 

“ Oh, no, I shouldn’t have done that, Mr. Biron,” he 
said rather dryly. “ But you were very welcome to the 
money. And I am glad to think you enjoyed yourself 
while it lasted.” 

This thi’ust, caused by a sudden remembrance of the 
hunter and the new clothes in which Theodore had been 
so smart at his expense, was all the vengeance Bram took. 
He tore himself away as speedily as possible, and ran 
off for the doctor with a lighter heart than he had 
borne for many a* day. Might not miracles happen? 
Might they not ? Bram asked himself something like this 
as he ran through the rain over the sodden ground. 

When he returned to the farmhouse with the doctor, 
Bram received a great shock. For, on entering the 
kitchen, he found Mr. Cornthwaite himself pacing up and 
down the room, while Joan watched him with anxious 
eyes from the scullery doorway. 

Josiah stopped short in his walk when the two men 
entered. He nodded to Bram, and wished the doctor 
good-evening as the latter passed through, and went up- 
stairs, followed by Joan. 


196 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


“Will you come through, sir?” said Bram. “There’s 
a fire in the drawing-room.” 

Mr. Cornthwaite, over whom there had passed some 
great change, followed him with only a curt assent. 
Bram supposed that even he had been touched to learn 
that the woman of whom he had come in search was so 
ill as to be past understanding that her persecution had 
already begun. He stood in front of the fire, with his hat 
in one hand and his umbrella in the other, with his back 
to Bram, in dead silence for some minutes. 

Then he turned abruptly, and asked in a stern, cold 
voice, without looking up from the floor, on which he was 
following the pattern of the carpet with the point of his 
umbrella — 

“ Did that scoundrel Biron get back home all right ? ” 

“ He’s got home, sir, but he’s very ill. He’s caught 
cold, I think.” 

“ He was not molested, attacked again, by the woman, 
the woman Tyzack, who threw the vitriol over him be- 
fore?” 

“ No, sir. She followed him, but he lost sight of her 
before he got here.” 

Mr. Cornthwaite nodded, and was again silent for some 
time. Bram was much puzzled. Instead of the fierce re- 
sentment, the savage anger which had possessed the be- 
reaved father immediately after the loss of his son there 
now hung over him a gloomy sadness tempered by an 
uneasiness and irresolution, which were new attributes in 
the business-like, strong-natured man. 

The silence had lasted some minutes again, when he 
spoke as sharply as before. 

“ I came to see the daughter, Claire Biron. But I’m 
told — the woman tells me — that she is ill, and can’t see 
any one. Is that true ? ” 

“Yes, sir. She is delirious.” 

Mr. Cornthwaite turned away impatiently, and again 
there was a pause. At last he said in the same sharp 
tone — 

“You brought her back home, I suppose ? ” 


MR. BIRON’S REPENTANCE. 


197 


“ Yes. At least I followed her, and when she grew too 
tired to walk alone I caught her up, and helped her 
along.” 

Mr. Cornthwaite looked at him curiously. The little 
room was ill-lighted, by two candles only and the red 
glow of the fire. He could see Bram’s face pretty well, 
but the young man could not see his. 

“ Still infatuated, I see ? ” said Josiah in a hard, ironical 
voice. 

Bram made no answer. 

“You intend to marry her, I suppose?” went on Mr. 
Cornthwaite in a harder tone than ever. 

Bram stared. But he could see nothing of Mr. Corn- 
thwaite’s features, only the black outline of his figure 
against the dim candle-light. 

“ No, sir,” said he steadily. “I only hope to be able to 
save her life.” 

“And how do you propose to do that?” 

“ Sir, you know best.” 

His voice shook, and he stopped. There was silence 
between them till they heard the footsteps of the doctor 
and Joan coming down the stairs. Mr. Cornthwaite 
opened the door. 

“Well, Doctor,” said he, “what of the patients?” 

There was more impatience than solicitude in his tone. 

“ They’re both very ill,” answered the doctor. “ They 
ought each to have a nurse, really.” 

“ Very well. Can you engage them. Doctor ? I’ll un- 
dertake to pay all the expenses of their illness.” 

The doctor was impressed by this generosity ; so was 
Bram, but in a different way. What was the reason of 
this sudden consideration, this unexpected liberality to 
the poor relations whom he detested, and to whom he 
imputed the death of his son ? 

“What’s the matter with them?” went on Mr. Corn- 
thwaite in the same hard, perfunctory, if not slightly sus- 
picious tone. 

“ Pneumonia in Mr. Biron’s case, brought on by expos- 
ure to wet and cold, no doubt. He has just had a severe 


198 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


shivering fit, and his pulse is up to a hundred and four. 
We must do the best we can, but he’s a bad subject for 
pneumonia, very.” 

“ And the daughter ? ” 

“ Acute congestion of the brain. She’s delirious.” 

“Ah!” 

Mr. Cornthwaite seemed satisfied now that he had the 
doctor’s assurance that the illness was genuine. He 
made no more inquiries, but he followed the medical man 
into the hall and to the front door. The doctor perceived 
that it was locked and bolted at the top and bottom. 

“ All right,” said he, “ I’ll go through the other way.” 

And he made his way to the kitchen, followed by Mr. 
Cornthwaite and Bram. 

As he opened the door which led into the kitchen, the 
wind blew strongly in his face from the outer door, which 
was wide open. The rain was sweeping in, and the table- 
cloth was blown off into his face as he entered. At the 
same moment Joan, who had gone into the back kitchen 
to prepare something the doctor had ordered, made her 
appearance at the door between the two rooms. 

“ I shouldn’t leave this door open,” said the doctor as 
he crossed the room to shut it. “ The wind blows through 
the whole house.” 

Joan stared. 

“ Ah didn’t leave it open, sir,” said she. “ Ah’ve only 
just coom through here, and it were shut then. Some 
one’s been and opened it.” 

Bram gave a glance round the room, and then opened 
the door through which he and the others had just come 
to examine the hall. 

“ What’s the matter ? ” asked Mr. Cornthwaite sharply. 
He had bidden the doctor a hasty good-bye, afraid of the 
condolences which he saw were on the tip of his tongue. 

Bram, with a candle in his hand, was peering into the 
dark corners. 

“ I was just thinking, sir, that perhaps Meg Tyzack had 
got in while we were talking in the drawing-room,” said 
he. “ Mr. Biron made me bolt the doors to keep her 


MR. BIRON’S REPENTANCE. 199 

from getting in. He seemed to be afraid she would fol- 
low him into the house.” 

The words were hardly uttered, when from the floor 
above there came a piercing scream, a woman’s scream. 

“ Claire ! ” shouted Bram, springing on the stairs. 

But before he could mount half a dozen steps a wild 
figure came out of Claire’s room, and rushed to the head 
of the staircase in answer to his call. But it was not 
Claire. It was, as Bram had feared, Meg Tyzack, recog- 
nizable only by her deep voice, by her loud, hoarse laugh, 
for the figure itself looked scarcely human. 

Standing at the top of the stairs, with her arms out- 
stretched as if to prevent any one’s passing her on the 
way up, the gaunt creature seemed to be of gigantic 
height, and looked, with her loose, disordered hair and 
the rags which hung down from her arms instead of 
sleeves, like a witch in the throes of prophecy. 

“ Stand back ! Stand back ! Leave her alone ! ” she 
cried furiously, as Bram rushed up the stairs, and strug- 
gled to get past her. She flung her arms round him, 
laughing discordantly, and clinging so tightly that with- 
out hurting her he would have found it impossible to dis- 
engage himself. 

“What has she done? What has she done?” asked 
Mr. Cornthwaite in a loud, hard, angry voice as he came 
to Bram’s assistance. 

At the first sound of Mr. Cornthwaite’s voice, Meg’s 
rage seemed suddenly to disappear, to give place to a fit 
of strange gloom, quite as wild, and still more terrible to 
see. Releasing Bram, who ran past her, she leaned over 
the banisters, and looked straight into Mr. Cornthwaite’s 
haggard face. 

“ What has she done ? What have I done ? ” said she 
in a horrible whisper. “ Why, I’ve done the best night’s 
work that’s ever been done on this earth, that’s what I’ve 
done. I’ve sent the man and the woman I hated both 
to . Ha ! ha ! ha ! ” 

With a shrieking laugh she leapt past him to the bot- 
tom of the stairs, 


200 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

MEG. 

Beam Elshaw heard Meg’s wild words as he rushed 
along the corridor towards the room out of which she had 
just come— Claire’s room, as he guessed, with a sob of 
terror rising in his throat. 

The door was open. On the floor, just inside, lay what 
Bram at first thought to be Claire’s lifeless body. Meg 
had dragged her off the bed, and flung her down in an 
ecstasy of mad rage. 

But even as he raised her in his arms, before the 
frightened Joan had run up to his aid, Bram was reas- 
sured. The girl was unconscious, but she was still 
breathing. Joan wanted to send him away. 

“ Leave her to me, sir, leave her to me. You can goa 
and fetch t’ doctor back,” cried she, as she tried jealously 
to take Claire out of his arms. 

But Bram did not seem to hear her. He was staring 
into the unconscious face as if this was his last look on 
earth. He hung over her with all the agony of his long, 
faithful, unhappy love softening his own rugged face, and 
shining in his gray eyes. 

“ Oh, Claire, Claire, my little Claire, my darling, are 
you going away ? Are you going to die ? ” 

The words broke from his lips, hoarse, low, forced up 
from his heart. He did not know that he had uttered 
them ; did not know that he was not alone with the sick 
girl. Joan, whose tears were running down her own face, 
suddenly broke into a loud sob, and shook him roughly by 
the shoulder. 

“ Put her down ; do ee put her down,” she said peremp- 
torily. “ Do ye go for to think as your calling to her will 
do her any good ? Goa ee for t’ doctor. And God forgive 
nie for speaking harsh to ye, sir,” 



“Oh Claire, Claire, my little Claire, are you going to die? ” 

— Page 200. 





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MEG. 


201 


And the good woman, seeing the strange alteration 
which came over Bram’s face as he raised his eyes from the 
girl’s face to hers as if he had come back from another 
world, changed her rough touch to a gentle pat of his 
shoulder, and turned away sobbing. 

Bram lifted Claire from the floor with the easy strength 
of which his spare, lean frame gave no promise, and placed 
her tenderly on the bed. Then he held one of her hands 
for a moment, leaned over her, and kissed her forehead 
with the lingering but calm tenderness of a mother to her 
babe. 

“ A’ reght,” muttered he to Joan, falling once more into 
the broad Yorkshire he had dropped for so long, “ Ah’m 
going.” 

At the foot of the stairs he was brought suddenly to 
full remembrance of the hard, matter-of-fact world of 
every day. Mr. Cornthwaite was standing, cold and 
grave, buttoning up his coat, ready to go. 

“ Where are you going?” asked he shortly. 

“ For the doctor again, sir. Meg has nearly done for 
her, for Miss Claire.” 

Mr. Cornthwaite uttered a short exclamation, which 
might have been meant to express compassion, but which 
was more like indifference, or even satisfaction. So Bram 
felt, in a sudden transport of anger. 

“And the old man — Mr. Biron, what did she do to 
him?” 

Bram was silent. He remembered Meg’s ferocious words, 
her triumphant cry that she had killed both the woman 
and the man she hated ; and as the remembrance came 
back he turned quickly, and went in the direction of 
Theodore’s room. But Mr. Biron was lying quietly in 
bed, apparently unaware that anything extraordinary had 
happened. For when he saw Bram he only asked if he 
were going to stay with him. Bram excused himself, and 
left the room. 

“ Mr. Biron’s all right, sir,” he said to Mr. Cornthwaite, 
who had by this time reached the door, impatient to get 
away. 


202 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


The only answer he got was a nod as Mr. Cornthwaite 
went out of the house. 

Bram had not to go far before he found some one to run 
his errand for him, so that he was able to return to the 
house. His mind was full of a strange new thought, one 
so startling that it took time to assimilate it. He sat for 
a long time by the kitchen fire, turning the idea over in 
his mind, until the doctor returned, and went away again, 
after reporting that Claire was not so much injured by 
the woman’s violence as might have been feared. 

It was very late when a nurse, the only one to be got 
on the spur of the moment, arrived at the farmhouse. 
Bram was still sitting by the kitchen fire. When she 
had been installed upstairs Joan came down for a little 
while. 

“What, you here still, Mr. Elshaw?” cried she. 

“Well, you might have known I should be,” he an- 
swered with a faint smile. “ I’m here till I’m turned out, 
day and night now ! ” 

“ Why, sir, ye’d best goa whoam,” said Joan kindly. 
‘ Ye can do no good, and Ah won’t leave her, ye may be 
sure. Ah’ve sent word whoam as they mun do wi’out 
me till t’ mornin’.” 

“ Ah, but I’ve something to say to you, Joan. Look 
here ; doesn’t it seem very strange that Mr. Cornthwaite 
when he is half-mad with grief at his son’s death, should 
come all the way out here to see his niece ? And that he 
should say nothing more about— about the death of his 
son ? And that he should give orders for a nurse to come, 
and undertake to pay all the expenses of her illness ? 
Doesn’t it look as if ” 

Joan interrupted him with a profound nod. 

“ Lawk-a-murcy, ay, sir. Ah’ve thowt o’ that too,” said 
she in an eager whisper. “ And don’t ye think, sir, as it’s 
a deal more likely that that poor, wild body Meg killed 
Master Christian wi’ her strong arms and her mad freaks 
than that our poor little lass oop yonder did it ? ” 

Bram sprang up. 

“Joan, that’s what I’ve been thinking myself ever since 


MEG. 


203 


the woman rushed out from here. She said she’d sent to 

h the woman and the man she hated, didn’t she? 

Well, if Claire was the woman, surely Mr. Christian must 
have been the man ! ” 

They stared each into the face of the other, full of 
strong excitement, each deriving fresh hope from the 
hope each saw in the wide eyes of the other. At last 
Joan seized his hand, and wrung it in her own strong 
fingers with a pressure which brought the water to his 
eyes. 

“You’ve got it, Mr. Bram, you’ve got it. Ah believe!” 
cried she in a tumult of feeling. “ Oh, for sure that’s 
reght ; and our poor little lass is as innocent of it as t’ 
new-born babe ! ” 

Full of this idea, Bram conceived the thought of making 
inquiries at Meg’s own home, and he started at once with 
this object. 

It was now very late, past eleven o’clock ; but his un- 
easiness was too great to allow him to leave the matter 
till the morning. So, at the risk of reaching the farm- 
house, where Meg’s parents lived, when everybody was in 
bed, he took a short cut across the wet, muddy fields, and 
arrived at his destination within an hour. 

The rain had ceased by this time, and the moon peeped 
out from time to time, and from behind a mass of strag- 
gling clouds. The little farm lay in a nook between two 
hills, and as Bram drew near he saw that a light was still 
burning within. In getting over a gate he made a little 
noise, and the next moment he saw a woman’s figure come 
quickly out of the farmhouse. 

“Meg, is that you, Meg?” asked a woman’s voice 
anxiously. 

“ No,” said Bram, “ it isn’t Meg, ma’am. It’s me, from 
Hessel, come to ask if she’d got safe home.” 

She came nearer, and peered into his face. 

“ And who be you ? ” 

“ My name’s Bram Elshaw. I’m a friend of the Birons 
at Duke’s Farm.” 

“Ah!” 


204 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


There was a world of sorrow, of significance, in the 
exclamation. After a pause, she said, not angrily, but 
despondently — 

“ Then maybe you know all about it ? Maybe you can 
tell me more than I know myself ? Have you seen any- 
thing of Meg— she’s my daughter — this evening?” 

Bram hesitated. The woman went on — 

“ Oh, don’t be afraid to speak out, sir, if it’s bad news. 
We’ve been used to that of late ; ever since our girl took 
up with t’ gentleman that has treated her so bad. It’s 
no use for to try to hide it ; t’ poor lass herself has spread 
t’ news about. She’s gone right out of her mind, I do 
believe, sir. She wanders about, so I often have to sit up 
half t’ night for her, and she never gives me a hand now 
with t’ farm work. And as neat a hand in t’ dairy as 
she used to be! Well, sir, what is it? Has she made 
away with herself?” 

“ She came to Duke’s Farm to-night, and attacked Miss 
Biron,” said Bram. 

“Well, she was jealous,” said Meg’s mother, who 
seemed to be less afflicted with sentiment concerning her 
daughter than with vexation at the loss of her services. 
The lass found it hard she should lose her character, and 
then t’ young gentleman care more for his cousin all t’ 
time. Not but what Meg was to blame. She used to 
meet him when she knew he was going to Duke’s Farm, 
up in t’ ruined cottages on top of t’ hill at Hessel. So 
I’ve learnt since. Folks tell you these things when it’s 
too late to stop them ! ” 

Bram remembered the night on which he had heard 
the voices in the dismantled cottages, and he remembered 
also with shame that he had conceived the idea that 
Christian’s companion might be his cousin. 

“Did she tell you where she was going when she went 
out to-night ? ” asked Bram. 

“ She hasn’t been home since this afternoon,” replied 
Meg’s mother. “ She went out before tea, muttering in 
her usual way threats against him and her, — always him 
and her. She never says any different. I’ve got used to 


MEG. 


205 


her ravings ; I don’t think she’d do any real harm unless 
to herself, poor lass ! ” 

“I’m afraid she has this time,” said Bram gravely. 
“ I don’t know anything more than I’ve told you ; but 
I’m afraid you must be prepared for worse news in the 
morning.” 

Startled, the woman pressed for an explanation. Bram, 
having really nothing but suspicion to go upon, could tell 
her nothing definite. But his suspicion was so strong 
that he felt no diffidence about preparing Meg’s mother 
for a dreadful shock. On the other hand, he was able to 
assure her that, whatever she might have done, her mani- 
festly disordered state of mind would be considered in 
the view taken of her actions. 

Then he returned to Hessel, tried the door of Duke’s 
Farm, and found it locked for the night. He went round 
to the front, looked up at the dim light burning in Claire’s 
room with a fervent prayer on his lips, and then climbed 
the hill to his own lodging. 

On inquiry at the farm next morning on his way to his 
work Bram learnt from the nurse, who was the only 
person he could see, that while Mr. Biron had had a very 
bad night, Claire was as well as could be expected. No 
decided improvement could be reported as yet, nor could 
it indeed be expected. But she was quieter, and her 
temperature had gone down, temporarily at least. 

He went on his way feeling a little more hopeful, after 
impressing upon the nurse to keep the doors locked for 
fear of any further incursions from poor, crazy Meg 
Tyzack. 

On arriving at the works, he saw, as was to be expected 
after the tragedy of the preceding evening, an unusual 
stir among the workmen, who were standing about the 
entrance, talking in eager and excited tones. One of the 
workmen saluted Bram, and asked him if he had “ heard 
t’ fresh news.” 

“ What’s that ? ” asked Bram. 

“ Coom this weay, sir ; All’ll show ye.” 

Bram, with a sick terror at his heart, asking himself 


206 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


what new horror he should be called upon to witness, 
followed the man through the works. The rain had come 
on again, a drizzling, light rain, which was already turn- 
ing the morning’s dust into a thick, black paste. They 
passed across the yards and through the sheds, until again 
they reached the spot where the railway divided the 
works into two parts. 

An exclamation broke from Bram’s lips. 

“ Not another — accident — here ? ” 

For there was quite a large throng of workmen scat- 
tered over the lines on the opposite side, and culminating 
in one dense group not far from the spot where he had 
found Christian on the previous night. 

“ Ay, sir, it’s a woman this time.” And his voice sud- 
denly fell to a hoarse whisper. “ T’ woman as killed Mr. 
Christian 1 T’ poor creature was crazed, for sure ! She 
got in here, nobody knows how, this morning; an’ 
she must ha’ thro wed herself down on t’ line pretty nigh 
t’ place where she throwed him down last neght. She 
must ha’ waited for t’ mornin’ oop train. Anyway, we 
fahnd her lyin’ there this mornin’, poor lass ! ” 

Bram had reached the group. He forced his way 
through, and looked down at the burden the men were 
carrying towards the very shed under the roof of which 
Chris had died. 

The mutilated body, which had been decapitated by the 
heavy wheels of the train, was only recognizable by the 
torn and stained clothing as that of Meg Tyzack. 

Bram staggered away, with his hand over his eyes. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE GOAL REACHED. 

No sooner had Bram recovered himself, and gone to the 
office without another question to any one, avoiding the 
group and the sickening sight they surrounded, than he 
found one of the servants from Holme Park with a letter 


THE GOAL REACHED. 


207 


from Mr. Cornthwaite, asking him to come up to the 
house at once. 

He found his employer sitting in the study alone, in the 
very seat, the very attitude, he had seen him in so often. 
While outside the house looked mournful in the extreme 
with its drawn blinds; while the servants moved about 
with silent step and scared faces, the master sat, appar- 
ently as unchanged as a rock after a storm. 

It was not until a change of position on the part of Mr. 
Cornthwaite suddenly revealed to Brain the fact that the 
lines in his face had deepened, the white patches in his 
hair grown wider, that the young man recognized that 
the tragedy had left its outward mark on him also. He 
had summoned Bram to talk about business. And this 
he did with as clear a head, as deep an apparent interest 
as ever. Even the necessary reference to his lost son he 
made with scarcely a break in his voice. 

“I shall only have the works shut on one day, the day 
of the funeral, Elshaw,” said he. “ But in the meantime 

I shan’t be down there myself. I — I ” At last his 

voice faltered. “I should like to be at work again myself 
— to give me something to think about, instead of think- 
ing always on the same unhappy subject. But I couldn’t 
go down there so soon after — after what I saw there.” 

Bram could not answer. The remembrance was too 
fresh in his own mind. 

“ So I want you to take my place as far as you can. 
You can telephone through to me if you want to know 
anything. Y ou have to fill your own place now, you know 
Elshaw, and — another’s.” 

Bram bowed his head, deeply touched. 

“ Now you can go. If you want to see — him, one of the 
servants will take you up. And the ladies, poor things, 
are sure to be about. They bear up beautifully, beauti- 
fully. His wife bears up a little too well for my taste. 
But — perhaps — we must forgive her ! ” 

He shook Bram by the hand, and the young man went 
out. 

In the death-chamber upstairs he found Mrs. Christian, 


208 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


dry-eyed, on her knees beside the bed. She sprang up on 
Bram’s entrance, and remained beside him, without speak- 
ing a word, while he looked long and earnestly at the 
placid face, looking handsomer in death than it had ever 
looked in life, the waxen mask, refined and delicate be- 
yond expression, the long golden moustache, the fair hair, 
silkier, smoother than Bram had ever seen them. 

And presently a mist came before his eyes, and he went 
hastily out. 

He found Mrs. Christian still beside him. She was very 
pale, but quite calm. 

“I am glad you are come. You were poor Christian’s 
great friend, were you not ? ” said she. 

“ Yes, madam,” said Bram rather stiffly. 

Her little chirping voice irritated him. Although he 
understood that the neglected, unloved wife could not be 
expected to feel Christian’s death as those did who had 
loved and been loved by him, he wished she would not 
bear up quite so well, just as Mr. Cornthwaite had done. 

But she insisted on following him downstairs, and then 
she opened the door of the morning-room, and asked him 
to come in. She would take no excuses ; she would not 
keep him a moment. 

“I wish to ask you about Miss Biron,” said she, to 
Bram’s great surprise, when she had shut the door of the 
room, and found herself alone with him. “ Oh, yes,” she 
went on with a little nod, as she noticed his astonished 
look, “ I bear her no malice because my husband loved her 
better than he did me. I only wish he had married her ! 
I do sincerely hope and pray that I nourish no unchristian 
feelings against anybody, even the poor, mad girl who 
killed him, and who has since made away with herself in 
such a dreadful manner ! ” 

She had heard of it already then ! Bram was appalled 
by the manner in which she dismissed such an awful 
occurrence in a few rapid words. 

“ And, of course,” she went on, “ I cannot feel that I have 
any right to blame Miss Biron, since we know that she 
did not run away with Christian, as we had supposed.” 


THE GOAL BEACHED. 


209 


Bram was overwhelmed with relief unspeakable. This 
was the first time he had heard anything more than doubt 
expressed as to Claire’s guilt in this matter. He had, in- 
deed, entertained hopes, especially since last night, that 
Claire had been wrongfully accused. But what was the 
strongest hope compared with this authoritative confir- 
mation of it? He was shrewd enough, strongly moved 
though he was, to control the emotion he felt, and to put 
this question — 

“ Did Mr. Cornthwaite — did his father — did Mr. Corn- 
thwaite know that he had done his son and Miss Biron — 
an injustice, thinking what he did ? ” 

“Why, of course he knew,” replied Mrs. Christian 
promptly. “When he found Christian in London he ac- 
cused him at once, and, of course, Christian told him — 
indeed, he could see for himself — he was wrong. Christian 
knew no more where his cousin had gone to than anvbodv 
else did.” 

Bram was silent. He resented Mr. Cornthwaite’s be- 
havior in leaving him in ignorance of such a fact. But 
his resentment was swallowed up in ineffable joy. 

“ What I wanted to learn was whether Miss Biron has 
all the nursing she wants,” chirped in little Mrs. Christian, 
“ because I should be quite glad to do anything I could 
for her out of Christian charity. I have done a good deal 
of sick nursing, and I like it,” pursued the poor, little 
woman. “ And I should be really glad of something to 
occupy my thoughts now in this dreadful time. I have 
been living with my parents, you know, since this misunder- 
standing first came about. His father brought Christian 
here, and when he got well he showed no wish to come 
back. But when I heard late last night of what had hap- 
pened, of course I came here at once. And you will ask 
Miss Biron if she will have me, won’t you ? I would nurse 
her well. And, indeed, they are not very kind to me 
here.” 

Over the round, pale, freckled face there passed a quiver 
of feeling which awoke Bram’s sympathy at last. The 
unattractive little woman had been rather cruelly treated 

14 


210 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


from first to last in this affair of Christian’s marriage 
The Cornthwaites, one and all, had thought much of him 
and little of her from the beginning to the end of the 
matter. And the offer to tend the girl Christian had 
loved so much better than herself had in it something 
touching, even noble, in Bram’s eyes. 

He stammered out that he would ask; that she was 
very good ; that he thanked her heartily. Then, ex- 
changing with her a hand-pressure which was warm on 
both sides, he left her, and went out of the gloomy house. 

Of course, Joan would not hear of accepting the kindly- 
offered services of poor Mrs. Christian. But when she 
heard of the welcome information which Bram had ob- 
tained from her she went half-mad with a delight which 
found expression in clumsy leaps and twirls and hand- 
clappings, and even tears. 

“And so it’s all reght, all reght, as we might ha’ 
knowed from t’ first. Oh, we ought to die o’ shame to 
think as we ever thowt anything different ! Oh, sir, an’ 
now ye can marry her reght off, an’ we can all be happy 
as long as we live ! Oh, sir, this is a happy day ! ” 

Bram tried to silence her, tried at least to check this 
confident expression of her hopes for the future. NTot 
that his own heart did not beat high : if she was happy 
in this newly-acquired knowledge, he was happier still. 
The idol was restored to its pedestal. It was he now, 
and not she, who had a shameful secret — the secret of 
his past doubts of her. 

Bram could not forgive himself for these, could not 
now conceive that they had been natural, justifiable. 
He had doubted her, the purest of creatures, as she was 
the noblest, the sweetest. He felt almost that he had 
sinned beyond forgiveness, that he should never dare to 
meet her frank eyes again. 

In the meantime, as day after day passed slowly by, 
the news he got of her grew better, while that he received 
of her father grew worse. 

At last, two days after the funeral of Christian, he 
learnt, when he made his usual morning inquiry at the 


THE GOAL REACHED. 211 

farm on his way down to the works, that Mr. Biron had 
passed away quietly during the night. 

His last words, uttered at half-past two in the morn- 
ing, had been a characteristic request that somebody 
would go up immediately to Holme Park with a note to 
Mr. Cornthwaite. 

Bram heard from Joan that they tried to keep the in- 
telligence of her father’s death from Claire, who was now 
much better, but who was still by the doctor’s orders 
kept very quiet. But she guessed something from the 
looks and sounds she heard, and before the day was over 
she had learnt the fact they tried to conceal ; and then 
she spent the rest of the day in tears. 

Mrs. Cornthwaite and Hester visited her on the follow- 
ing day, and begged her to come back with them. But 
Claire refused very courteously, but without being quite 
able to hide her feeling that their offers of kindness and 
of sympathy came too late. 

As, however, the farm and everything Mr. Biron had 
left were to be sold, it was necessary that she should go 
somewhere. So, on the day after the funeral, Claire re- 
turned to the cottage of the old housekeeper at Chelmsley, 
who had written inviting her most warmly to return. 

Bram, who had not dared to ask to see her, feeling more 
diffidence in approaching her than he had ever done be- 
fore, felt a pang whenever he passed the desolate farm- 
house on his way to and from his work. All the news 
he got of Claire was through Joan, who received from 
the grateful and affectionate girl letters which she could 
not answer without great difficulty and many appeals to 
her children, who had had the advantage of the School 
Board. 

Joan gradually became sceptical as the time went on as 
to the fulfilment of her old wish that Bram should marry 
Claire. Winter melted into spring, and yet he made no 
effort to see her ; he sent her no messages, and she, on her 
side, said very little about him in her letters. Indeed, as 
the leaves began to peep out on the trees, there cropped 
up occasional references in those same letters of hers to 


212 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


the kindness of a curate, who was teaching her to sketch, 
and encouraging her to take such simple pleasures as 
came in her way. 

Joan spelt out one of the letters which referred to these 
occupations to Bram on the next occasion of their meet- 
ing. Then she looked up with a broad smile, and gave 
him a huge nod. 

“ Ye’ll get left in the lurch, Mr. Elshaw, that’ll be fend 
of it ! ” she said, with great emphasis. 

“ Well,” said Bram with apparent composure, “ if she 
takes him, it will be because she likes him. And if she 
likes him, why shouldn’t she have him ? ” 

But he was ill- pleased for all that. The vague hopes 
he had long ago cherished had become stronger, more 
definite of late ; he had forced himself to be patient, to 
wait, telling himself that it would be indelicate to intrude 
upon the grief, the horror of the awful shock from which 
she must still be suffering. 

He had long since heard all the particulars of the terri- 
ble death of Chris, and of the manner in which the mis- 
take between Meg and Claire had come to be made. A 
workman had seen Christian and Claire in earnest con- 
versation not far from the railway line; had seen her 
give him the note from her father which had brought her 
down. Christian had spoken kindly to her, had bent over 
her as if with the intention of kissing her, when suddenly 
the stalwart figure of Meg, who had followed them from 
some corner where she had concealed herself in the works, 
rushed between them, threatening them both with wild 
words. Claire had crept away in alarm, and Meg had 
gradually dragged Chris, talking, volubly gesticulating all 
the time, out upon the railway lines. She must have cal- 
culated to a nicety the hour at which the next train 
might be expected, so the general opinion afterwards ran. 
At any rate, it was she who was with Christian when the 
train came by ; and as every one believed, as, in fact, poor 
Chris himself had said, she had fiung him of malice pre- 
pense down on the line just as the train came up to 
them. 


THE GOAL REACHED. 


213 


The workingman who gave Bram most of these details 
was the person who disabused Mr. Cornthwaite of his 
idea that the murderess was Claire. He had given his 
information at the very time that Bram was on his way 
to Hessel in the company of poor little Claire. 

Although Claire herself had not witnessed the catas- 
trophe, she had had the awful shock of coming suddenly, 
a few minutes later, upon the mangled body of her dying 
cousin. And Bram felt that he could not in decency ap- 
proach her with his own hopes on his lips until she had 
in some measure recovered, not only from that shock, but 
from her father’s death, and the loss of her beloved home. 

The farm now looked dreary in the extreme. April 
came, and it was still unlet. The grass in the garden had 
grown high, the crocuses were over, and there was no one 
to tie up their long, thin, straggling leaves. The tulips 
were drooping their petals, and the hyacinths were dying. 
There was nobody now to sow the seeds for the summer. 

Bram was on his way back home early one Saturday 
afternoon, when the sun was shining brightly, showing 
up the shabby condition of the house and grounds, the 
absence of paint on doors and shutters, the weeds which 
were shooting up in the midst of the rubbish with which 
the farmyard was blocked up. 

As he leaned over the garden gate and looked ruefully 
in, with painful thoughts about the little girl who was for- 
getting him in the society of the curate, he fancied he 
heard a slight noise coming from the house itself. 

He listened, he looked. Then he started erect. He 
grew red ; his heart began to beat at express speed. 

There was some one in the house, stealing from room to 
room, not making much noise. And from the glimpse he 
caught of a disappearing figure in its flight from one room 
to another Bram knew that the intruder was Claire. 

He stole round to the back of the house with his heart 
on fire. 

The door was locked ; she had not got in that way. 
Bram had never given up the workman’s habit of carry- 
ing a few handy tools in a huge knife in his pocket, and 


214 


FORGE AND FURNACE. 


in a few seconds he had taken one of the outside kitchen 
shutters off its hinges, and shot back the window-catch. 

The next moment he was in the room. 

But what a different room ! The deal table where he 
had so often done odd jobs of carpentering for Claire ; 
the old sofa on which she had lain on the night of Chris- 
tian’s death while she uttered those precious words of 
love for himself, which he had treasured in his heart all 
through the dark winter ; the three-legged stool on which 
she used to sit by the fire ; the square, high one he used 
to occupy on the other side — all these things were gone, 
and there was nothing in the bare and dirty apartment 
but some odds and ends of sacking and a broken packing 
case. 

Suddenly Bram conceived an idea. He dragged the 
packing case over the fioor, taking care not to make much 
noise, put it in the place of his old stool, and sat down 
on it, bending over the dusty ashes which had been left 
in the fireplace just as he used to do over the fire on a 
cold evening. 

And presently the door opened softly, and Claire came 
in. 

He did not look round. He was satisfied to know that 
she was there, there, almost within reach of his arm. 
And still he bent over the ashes. 

A slight sob at last made him look up. 

Oh, what a sight for him ! The little girl, looking 
smaller than ever in her black frock and bonnet, was 
standing in the full sunlight, smiling through her tears ; 
smiling with such unspeakable peace and happiness in her 
eyes, such a glint of joy illuminating her whole face, that 
as he got up he staggered back, and cried — 

“Eh, Miss Claire, you’re more like a sunbeam than 
ever ! ” 

She did not answer at first. She only clasped her 
small hands and stared at him, with her lips parted, 
and the tears springing to her eyes. But then she saw 
something in his face which brought the blood to hers ; 
and she turned quickly away, and pretended to find a 


THE GOAL REACHED. 216 

difficulty in making her way through the rubbish on the 
floor. 

“ Miss Claire ! ” said he. “ Oh, Miss Claire ! ” 

That was the sum and substance of the eloquence he 
had been teaching himself; of the elaborate and care- 
fully-chosen words which he had so often prepared to 
meet her with, words which should be respectful and yet 
affectionate, sufficiently distant, yet not too cold. It 
had all resolved itself into this hapless, helpless exclama- 
tion — 

“ Miss Claire ! Oh, Miss Claire ! ” 

“ I’m not surprised to And you here, Bram,” said she 
with a little touch of growing reserve. “ When I heard 
a noise in here I knew I should find you — just the 
same.” 

There was a very short pause. Then Bram said 
breathlessly — 

“ Yes, Miss Claire, you’ll always find me just the same.” 

The words, the tone, summed up all the kindness he 
had ever shown her ; all the patient tenderness, the un- 
speakable, modest goodness she knew so well. Claire’s 
face quivered all over. Then she burst into a torrent of 
tears. Bram watched her for a minute in dead silence. 
Then, not daring so much as to come a step nearer, he 
whispered hoarsely — 

“ May I comfort you. Miss Claire, may I dare?” 

“ Oh, Bram — dear Bram — if you don’t — I shall die ! ” 

Which, when you come to think of it, was a very pretty 
invitation. 

And Bram accepted it. 

And they were married, and they were happy ever after- 
wards, though, in these despondent days, it hardly does 
to say so. 


THE END. 


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